Sadra's ontological hermeneutics and the religious language problem

Investigating the significance and knowledge domain of a holy text is one of the fundamental problems of religious Language. For Sadra the religious language is a cognitive language. He considers the relation between word and meaning in Revelation as a genetic one; he believes that contrary to imagery in literature in revelation there is a univocity between appearance and reality and the descended truths in the existential hierarchies correspond with each other in a vertical relationship. In this domain, Molla Sadra explains philosophically the self-manifestation of the revealed truths in terms of holy text by using the correspondence between the knowledge and language (Kalam) with the being in the arc of descent and in the arc of ascent he provides an understanding process of the holy text whose reconstruction forms his model of ontological hermeneutics. The principal problem of this article is the explanation of the significance of religious language and its cognitive domain in Sadra’s hermeneutic model which results from an investigation of this model and effective factors in the process of the holy text understanding. This research has been conducted based on Mafatih al-ghayb and explanation of its philosophical foundations on the basis of the Transcendent Philosophy and one of its most important findings is displaying the role of triad of individual, text and the author in relation together by Sadra’s hermeneutic model and using this model for explaining the cognitive domain of religious language regarding the text and also from text to extra-text. Contrary to the one-dimensional exoteric conventional or esoteric dogmatic and absolutist models in understanding Quran, Mulla Sadra provides a comprehensive multiple coherent model that is based on singular reality and is rooted in the existence hierarchy, existential layers of human being and the interiors of holy text. Due to move around the gradational singular reality, the process of understanding distinguishes this model from dogmatic absolutism in understanding; this causes to not slip in abyss of relativism and thus it solves the problem of judgment among the multiple interpretations. Therefore, Sadra’s ontological hermeneutics is situated between two poles of absolutism and relativism. For doing an interpretative movement from the exterior to the interior of the text and understanding the hierarchical truth of that, he provides a special model in which the interaction among individual, text and author causes to understand the hierarchical text. Based on the existential link and unity between individual and text in each stage of existence, a proper stage of understanding results and the highest point of this understanding is a unity with the author as a true and ultimate meaning of the text. Thus Sadra’s model opens a way to the text world the highest point of which is an ontological unity among the triad of individual, text and author. In this way the role and effect of presuppositions in interpretation is clarified by Sadra. Furthermore, with this model he has answered the problem of judgment about the multiple interpretations. However, the domain of Sadra’s cognitive religious language does not content oneself with text, but in his view everything is interpretable, because the world is the same language (Kalam) and also everything is or in the text (compilation book) or in the extra-text (generation book and soul book). Since the text and extra-text have an interior and an exterior and the interpretation reveals the way from the exterior to the interior, so speaking of interpretability of everything is not absurd. Hence in Sadra’s model the interpretation is not limited to find out a common meaning between the descended knowledge and the higher stages of that knowledge, but it includes the finding out of a truth common between the descended existence and the higher stages of that existence, too. Therefore, we must search an approach for analyzing the existential phenomena of the world; Sadra’s hermeneutics provides a way to enter into meaning of the soul book and generation book by using the interpretative model of compilation book. In Sadra’s philosophy we encounter with text as one mode of existence. The relation between the text and the extra-text is an existential one, at least in case of holy text, and the world is the same language. This existential aspect of text and Mulla Sadra’s emphasis on homothety and correspondence among the compilation book, soul book and generation book reinforce this hypothesis that for knowing and understanding the soul book and generation book we can benefit from Sadra’s ontological hermeneutics and its encounter with the text. On this ground, in interpreting the extra-text the triad of individual, text and author is transformed into the triad of individual, extra-text and Creator; that corresponds with this. As in the first triad the understanding of text depends on the unity of individual and text during the trans-substantial motion, in interpreting the extra-text also the understanding of extra-text depends on the unity of individual and the extra-text. Similar to the interpretation and understanding of the world, the human being has been introduced as a homothetic version of the world and the perfect man as a variant of the world. Of course, here also the highest point of meaning is the unity among the triad of individual, extra-text and Creator. Perhaps this approach opens a way to formation of the ontological sciences specially in domain of human sciences and types of religious knowledge. In Sadra’s hermeneutics the interpretation of the world’s existents is God