The Evolution of the Meaning of Immanence from Peripatetic Philosophy to Transcendent Theosophy

"Immanence" is an important and much used concept in Islamic philosophy. An inquiry into the evolution of "subsistence of immanence" suggests that the theory of immanence in a logical course from peripatetic, to illumination, and to transcendent theosophy, has passed through fundamental alterations. One influential concept in this context is that of "permeation" being the main constituent of immanence in the two peripatetic and illumination systems. Having dealt with issues such as that there are some indivisible things despite their being material and of immanence, that sense and imagined perceptions are incorporeal and void of permeation and immanence, and the challenges of the theory of immanence in divine knowledge, they have eliminated the concept of "permeation" from "immanence". Thus in transcendent theosophy, the definition of "immanence" evolved from "permeation" into the concept of "existence for other than itself" i.e. an immanent thing in a locus. It eventually paved the way for novel theories such as that accident is to be regarded as a grade of substance and that matter and form are of unified composition and the theory of subsistence of issuing.