The Compatibility of Gradational Plurality with Personal Unity

The issue of the “Unity of Existence” is one of the philosophical preoccupations in mysticism as well as al-?ikmat al-Muta‘ālīyah. While mystics believe in the personal unity of existence, in philosophy, and especially in al-?ikmat al-Muta‘ālīyah the plurality of existence is deemed self-evident of approximately so. The crowning achievement of uadr al-Muta’allihīn is “the essentiality of existence”. Analyzing this notion, he derives the gradation of existence, and the idea that an effect is the very relation to its creating cause. In this way, he takes a step toward the idea of personal unity of existence as claimed by the mystics, and rationalizes it. This article tries to show that the personal unity of existence in Mullā uadrā is compatible with its gradation, and therefore, one cannot reject the existence of things that are not necessarily existent all together, and consider them null and void.