A Comparative Study of the Inception of the World from the Viewpoints of Plotinus and Mulla Sadra

One of the most important issues which, on a deep philosophical level, strikes the human mind, is the issue of how the multitude of creatures has come into being at the inception of existence, and what the composition of the world created by God is like. By way of tracing the development of the issue both historically and briefly, the paper aims at elaborating on a special view, which in short presents the inception of the world, i.e. the theory of emanation.Plotinus puts the theory forward. He is the first philosopher to discuss the quality of the world’s coming into existence from the First Source. He also bases his own interpretation of the world on the very same theory. He has deservedly had an influence on the Islamic philosophers’ thought by way of his book Apology, a concise collection of his works. Extreme influence of his theory can be seen in Sadra’s Hikmat-i Mote’alieh. On the basis of his own principles of ideological thinking as well as the special terminology of Hikmat-i Mote’alieh, Sadra was able to analyze the emanative sort of creation. In presenting a general scheme of the various worlds of existence, he arrived at the theory of existential unity in his philosophy.