The Role of Categories in Mulla Sadra's Philosophy

Categories are tools of our mind through which we know the facts around us. Man puts outer objects or the concepts that govern them under one of the categories to understand them. But the extent to which the categories truly reflect all external facts and all the facts of existence is not yet clear. From the point of view of some Islamic philosophers, it can be inferred that categories and types that are created below them play a decisive role in determining the type of creatures, that is, they are not merely tools for classifying beings in the human mind. Mulla Sadra depicts a different view of categories. He considers them to be limited to the mentally-posited quiddity. It is clear that when we consider existence to be original and not essence, all considerations and laws governing essence will also become unrealistic and subjective. In Mulla Sadra's philosophy, we do not have to conform to the categories and we are not bound to categorization. We can claim that, in Mulla Sadra's philosophy, the importance and centrality of categories in determining the type of beings is lost, and a being can change its nature from one type to another and from one category to another without the impossibility of being necessary. In this article, we will first briefly provide examples to show exceptions to the inclusion and comprehensiveness of categories from the perspective of various philosophers. Examples of facts not covered by categories and disputes over the total number of categories are cases in point. We try to illustrate the aforementioned point with examples from Mulla Sadra's works. We then examine the categories and their place in the fundamental reality of existence. It is obvious that the examination of such issues requires analysis, and inference from the opinions of philosophers. Our goal in this article is not necessarily to seek textual evidence, but to use the text to explain the underlying purpose.