Transcendence and Man’s Existential Width in the Ontological Systems of Mullā Ṣadrā and Heidegger

Heidegger has provided some innovative interpretations regarding several topics particularly in relation to human existence. His views about human beings are comparable to those of Mullā Ṣadrā in certain respects. One of them is their belief in man’s transcendence and existential width. Both thinkers maintain that man is not an entity imprisoned in itself; man, who is the source of many possibilities and is aware of them, is subject to “becoming” and can become what they are not at the present time. In other words, man can go beyond the existing situation and attain transcendence. Although there is a similarity in this regard between the thoughts of these two thinkers, it should be considered that in Mullā Ṣadrā’s ontological system, the human soul, owing to its essential immateriality, always enjoys a perception and understanding of its identity as connected to an unlimited being and infinite truth. The human soul, which entails the whole limits of being in itself, tries to grant meaning to its existence through gaining proximity and similarity to that infinite truth in the course of traversing its out-of-itself stages. The soul’s developmental journey for reaching the ultra-rational stage also continues after death. By contrast, in Heidegger’s ontological system, truth is based on Dasein, whose being real indicates that it is the only existence in the world. It also means that, without being connected to a mysterious and transcendent power, Dasein always possesses a pre-knowledge of everything that comprises the world and continually perceives things with no cover at highest levels of clarity. Therefore, Dasein relies on itself in transcendence, the continuation of which is motivated by actualizing its existential possibilities until it dies. Death is the last existential possibility of Dasein upon which it attains its end.