The most basic problem to which the mere study of the world of creation fails to provide an answer is the necessity of existence and uncreatedness of the Power which transcends nature. The world is a mirror in the sense that it indicates the existence of a Mighty Hand and a Wise Power, but it does not tell us anything more about Its nature. It does not tell us whether that Power is subservient to something else or not, or if it is self-subsisting. And if it is subject to something else, what is that? The objective of the Quran is not only that we should know that a Mighty Hand administers the world, but that we may know that that Administrator is "Allah" and that "Allah" is the indefinable: (There is nothing like Him), whose Essence encompasses all perfection, or in other words, that "Allah" signifies Absolute Perfection and is the referent of, (His is the loftiest likeness). How can the study of nature give us an understanding of such notions and concepts?
The second problem is that of the Unity of God. The Quran has stated this issue in a logical form and used a syllogistic argument to explain it. The method of argument it has employed in this regard is what is called 'exclusive syllogism' or 'reductio ad impossible' (burhan al-tamanu'). On occasion it eliminates the possibility of multiplicity in the efficient cause as in the following verse: [6]
If there had been (multiple) gods in them (i.e. the earth and the heaven) other than God, they would surely go to ruin ... (21:22)
At other times it argues by eliminating the possibility of multiplicity in the final cause:
God has not taken to Himself any son, nor is there any god besides Him; for then each god would have taken off that he created and some of them would have risen up over others ... (23:91)
The Quran never suggests that the study of the system of creation can lead us to the knowledge of the Unity of the Godhead so as to imply that the essential knowledge of the transcendental Creator be considered attainable from that source. Moreover, such a suggestion would not have been correct.
The Quran alludes to various problems as indicated by the following examples:
No thing is like Him ... (42:11) And God's is the loftiest likeness ... (16:60) To Him belong the Names most Beautiful. (20:8) And His is the loftiest likeness in the heavens and the earth ... (30:27) He is God, there is no god but He. He is the King, the All-holy, the All-peaceable. the All-faithful, the All-preserver, the All-mighty, the All-compeller, the All-sublime ... (59:23) And to God belong the East and the West; whither so ever you turn, there is the Face of God ... (2:115) And He is God in the heavens and the earth; He knows your secrets, and what you publish ... (6:3) He is the First and the Last, the Outward and the Inward; He has knowledge of everything. (57:3) He is the Living, the Everlasting ... (2:255) God, is the Everlasting, [Who] has not begotten, and has not been begotten and equal to Him is not any one. (112:2-4)
Why does the Quran raise such issues? Is it for the sake of propounding mysterious matters incomprehensible to man, who, according to al-Nadawi, lacks the knowledge of its essential principles, and then asking him to accept them without comprehending their meaning? Or, the Quran actually does want him to know God through the attributes and descriptions that have come in it? And, if this is true, what reliable approach does it recommend? How is it possible to acquire this knowledge through the study of the natural phenomena? The study of the creation teaches us that God has knowledge of the things; that is, the things that He has made were created knowingly and wisely. But the Quran expects us not only to know this, but also stresses that:
Indeed God has the knowledge of everything. (2:231) And not so much as the weight of an atom in earth or heaven escapes from thy Lord, neither is aught smaller than that, or greater, but in a Manifest Book. (10:61) Say: "If the sea were ink for the Words of my Lord, the sea would be spent before the Words of my Lord are spent, though We brought replenishment the like of it. " (18:109)
This means that God's knowledge is infinite and so is His power. How and wherefore is it possible through perception and observation of the world of creation to reach the conclusion that the Creator's Knowledge and Power are infinite? The Quran, similarly, propounds numerous other problems of the kind. For instance, it mentions al-lawh al-mahfuz (the Protected Tablet), lawh al-mahw wa al-'ithbat (The Tablet of Expunction and Affirmation), jabr and ikhtiyar (determinism and free will), wahy (revelation) and ilham (intuition), etc.; none of which are susceptible to inquiry through the empirical study of the world of creation.
It must be admitted that the Quran, definitely, has raised these problems in the form of a series of lessons and has emphasized their importance through advice and exhortation. The following verses of the Quran may be quoted in this connection:
What, do they not meditate in the Quran? Or is it that there are locks upon their hearts? .... (47:24) (This is) a Scripture that We have revealed unto thee, full of blessing, that they may ponder its revelations, and that men of understanding may reflect. (38:29)
Inevitably, we are forced to accept that the Quran assumes the existence of a reliable method for understanding the meaning of these truths, which have not been revealed as a series of obscure incomprehensibles which lie beyond the reach of the human mind.
The scope of problems propounded by the Quran in the sphere of metaphysics is far greater than what can be resolved or be answered through the study of physical creation. This is the reason why the Muslims have pursued these problems, at times through spiritual and gnostic efforts, and at other times through speculative and rational approach.
I wonder whether those who claim that the Quran considers the study of nature as the sole, sufficient means for the solution of metaphysical problems, can give a satisfying answer in regard to the multifarious problems propounded by it, a characteristic which is special to this great heavenly Book.
'Ali's sole source of inspiration in his exposition of the problems mentioned in the previous chapters is the Holy Quran, and the sole motive behind his discourses is exegetical. Perhaps, had it not been for 'Ali ('a) the rationalistic and speculative aspects of the Quran would have forever remained uninterpreted.
After these brief introductory remarks on the value of these issues, we shall go on to cite some relevant examples from the Nahj al-balaghah.
The Divine Essence and Attributes:
In this section we shall cite some examples of the Nahj al-balaghah's treatment of the problems of theology related with Divine Essence and Attributes. Later we shall make a brief comparative study of the issue in various schools and conclude our discussion on this aspect of the Nahj al-balaghah.
However, before proceeding further, I ask for the reader's pardon that the discussion in the last three sections became a bit technical and philosophical, which is not very welcome for those not used to it. But what is the remedy? Discussion on a book such as the Nahj al-balaghah does entail such ups and downs. For this reason, we shall limit ourselves to giving only a few examples from the book on this subject, and refrain from any elaborate discussion. Because, if we were to comment on every sentence of the Nahj al-balaghah, the result will be, as is said:
My mathnawi requires seventy maunds of paper.
The Divine Essence:
Does the Nahj al-balaghah have anything to say about the Divine Essence and how to define it? The answer is, Yes, and a lot. However, much of the discussion revolves around the point that the Divine Essence is Absolute and Infinite Being, without a quiddity. His Essence accepts no limits and boundaries like other beings, static or changeable, which are limited and finite. A changeable being is one which constantly transcends its former limits and assumes new ones. But such is not the Divine Essence. Quiddity, which may qualify and confine Him within limits of finitude, is not applicable to Him. None of the aspects of being are devoid of His Presence, and no kind of imperfection is appllicable to Him, except absence of any imperfection whatsoever: the only thing amiss in Him is absence of defect or inadequacy of any kind. The sole kind of negation applicable to Him is the negation of all negations. The only kind of non-being attributable to Him is the negation of any kind of imperfection in relation to Him. He is free from all shades of non-being which characterize the creatures and effects. He is free from finitude, multiplicity, divisibility, and need. The only territory that He does not enter is that of nothingness and non-being. He is with every thing, but not in any thing, and nothing is with Him. He is not within things, though not out of them. He is over and above every kind of condition, state, similarity, and likeness. For, these qualities relate to limited and determinate beings characterized by quiddity:
He is with everything but not in the sense of [physical] nearness. He is different from every thing but not in the sense of separation. (Sermon 1 )
He is not inside things in the sense of physical [pervasion or] penetration, and is not outside them in the sense of [physical] exclusion [for exclusion entails a kind of finitude]. (Sermon 186)
He is distinct from things because He overpowers them, and the things are distinct from Him because of their subjection to Him. (Sermon 152)
That is, His distinctness from things lies in the fact that He has authority and control over them. However, His power, authority and sovereignty, unlike that of the creatures, is not accompanied with simultaneous weakness, subjugation, and subjection. His distinction and separateness from things lies in the fact that things are totally subject to His power and authority, and that which is subject and subordinated can never be like the one who subjugates and commands control over it. His separateness from things does not lie in physical separation but is on account of the distinction which lies between the Provider and the provided, the Perfect and the imperfect, the Powerful and the weak.
These kind of ideas are replete in 'Ali's discourses. All the problems which shall be discussed later are based on the principle that Divine Essence is Absolute and Infinite, and the concepts of limit, form and condition do not apply to it.
Divine Unity an Ontological, not a Numerical Concept:
Another feature of tawhid (monotheism) as propounded by the Nahj al-balaghah is that Divine Unity is not numerical, but something else. Numerical unity means the oneness of something which has possibility of recurrence. It is always possible to imagine that the quiddity and form of an existent is realizable in another individual being. In such cases, the unity of an individual possessing that quiddity is numerical oneness and stands in opposition to duplicity or multiplicity.
'It is one,' means that there is not another like it, and inevitably this kind of unity entails the quality of being restricted in number, which is a defect; because one is lesser in number as compared to two or more of its kind. But, if a being be such that assumption of recurrence with regard to it is impossible, since it is infinite and unlimited, and if we assume another like it to exist, it will follow that it is the same as the first being or that it is something which is not similar to it and therefore cannot be called a second instance of it. In such a case, unity is not numerical. That is, this kind of unity is not one opposed to duplicity or multiplicity, and when it is said 'It is one,' it does not mean that 'there are not two, three or more of its kind,' but it means that a second to it is unconceivable.
This notion can further be clarified through an example. We know that the astronomers and physicists are not in agreement about the dimensions of the universe, whether it is limited in size or infinite. Some scientists have favoured the idea of an unlimited and infinite universe; others claim that the universe is limited in dimensions so that if we travel in any direction, we shall reach a point beyond which there is no space. The other issue is whether the universe in which we live is the only universe in existence, or if there are other universes existing besides it.
Evidently, the assumption of another physical world beyond our own is a corollary to the assumption that our universe is not infinite. Only in this case it is possible to assume the existence of, say, two physical universes each of which is limited and has finite dimensions. But if we assume that our universe is infinite, it is not possible to entertain the assumption of another universe existing beyond it. For, whatever we were to assume would be identical with this universe or a part of it.
The assumption of another being similar to the Being of the One God-like the assumption of another physical universe besides an infinite material universe-amounts to assuming the impossible, for the Being of God is absolute: Absolute Selfhood and Absolute Reality.
The notion that Divine Unity is not a numerical concept, and that qualifying it by a number is synonymous with imposing limits on the Divine Essence, is repeatedly discussed by the Nahj al-balaghah:
He is the One, but not in a numerical sense. (Sermon 152)
He is not confined by limits nor counted by numbers. (Sermon 186)
He who points to Him, admits for Him limitations; and he who admits limitations for Him has numbered Him. (Sermon 1)
He who qualifies Him limits Him. He who limits Him numbers Him. He who numbers Him denies His pre-eternity. (Sermon 152)
Everything associated with unity is deficient except Him. (Sermon 65)
How beautiful, profound, and full of meaning is the last sentence. It states that everything except the Divine Essence is limited if it is one. That is, every thing for which another of its kind is conceivable is a limited being and an addition of another individual would increase its number. But this is not true of the Unity of the Divine Essence; for God's Unity lies in His greatness and infinity, for which a like, a second, an equal or a match is not conceivable.
This concept that Divine Unity is not a numerical notion is exclusively an Islamic concept, original and profound, and unprecedented in any other school of thought. Even the Muslim philosophers only gradually realized its profundity through contemplating the spirit of the original Islamic texts and in particular the discourses of 'Ali ('a), and ultimately formally incorporated it in the Islamic metaphysical philosophy. There is no trace of this profound concept in the writings of the early Islamic philosophers like al Farabi and Ibn Sina. Only the later philosophers ushered this concept into their philosophic thinking calling it "Really True Unity," in their terminology.
God, The First and the Last; the Manifest and the Hidden:
Of the many issues discussed by the Nahj al-balaghah is the notion that God is the First and the Last, the Hidden and the Manifest. Of course this, too, like other notions, has been deduced from the Holy Quran; though here we are not going to quote the verses from the Quran. God is the First, but His precedence is not temporal so as to be in contradiction with His being the Last. He is the Manifest, but not in the sense of being physically visible or perceptible to the senses; His Manifestness does not contradict His Hiddenness. In fact His Firstness is identical with His Lastness and similarly His Manifestness and Hiddenness are identical; they are not two different things:
Praise be to Allah, for whom one condition does not precede another, so that He may he the First before being the Last or may be Manifest before being Hidden ... (Sermon 65)
Time is not His accomplice, nor does He need the assistance of tools and agents His Being transcends time. His Existence transcends nothingness and His pre-eternity transcends all beginning. (Sermon 186)
The Divine Essence's transcendence over time, nothingness, beginning, and end is one of the most profound concepts of al-hikmah philosophy. God's pre-eternity does not mean that God has always existed. Certainly God has always existed but Divine pre-eternity (azaliyyah) is something greater in meaning than 'existence at all times'; because, 'existing at all times' assumes existence in time; but God's Being has not only been at all times, It precedes time itself. This is the meaning of Divine pre-eternity. This shows that His precedence is something other than temporal precedence.
Praise be to God, whose creation bears testimony to His Existence; temporality (huduth) of whose creation is the evidence of His preternity the similarity and likeness amongst whose creation proves that He is unique. The senses do not perceive Him and nothing can conceal Him. (Sermon 152)
That is, God is both Hidden and Manifest. By Himself He is Manifest but is Hidden from the human senses. His Hiddenness from the senses is due to man's own limitations and not on account of Him.
It needs no proof that existence is synonymous with manifestation; the more powerful the existence of a being, the more manifest it would be. Conversely, the weaker its being is and the more intermingled it is with non-being, the less manifest it is to itself and others.
For everything, there are two modes of being: its being-in-itself (wujud fi nagsih), and its being-for-others. The being of every thing for us depends upon the structure of our senses and certain special conditions. Accordingly, the manifestation of a thing is also of two kinds: its manifestation-in-itself (zuhur fi nafsih) and its manifestation-for-others.
Our senses, on account of their limitations, are able to perceive only a limited number of finite objects possessing the characteristics of similarity and opposition. The senses can perceive colours, shapes, sounds, etc., which are limited temporally and spacially; that is, their existence is confined within a particular time and place. Now if there existed a uniform light, always and everywhere, it would not be perceptible. A continuous monotonous sound heard always and everywhere would not be audible.
The Being of God, which is absolute being and absolute reality, is not confined to any particular time and place, and is hidden from our senses. But God in Himself is absolutely manifest; the perfection of His manifestness, which follows from the perfection of His Being, is itself the cause of His hiddenness from our senses. The two aspects of His manifestness and hiddenness are one and the same in His Essence. He is hidden because He is perfectly manifest, and this perfect manifestness conceals Him.
Thou, who art hidden on account of Thy perfect brilliance, Thou Art the Manifest, hidden in Thy manifestness.
The veil on Thy face is also Thy face,
So manifest Thou art,
Thy manifestness conceals Thee from the world's eyes.
An Appraisal
An appraisal however brief of the approach of the Nahj al-balaghah and its comparison with that of other schools of thought is essential for discovering the true worth of its views on the problems of theology. We shall confine ourselves to the brief, though not quite sufficient, examples quoted in the foregoing pages and proceed to evaluate them.
The subject of the Divine Essence and Attributes is one which has been discussed a lot by the ancient and modern philosophers, mystics and Sufis of the East and the West. But in general their method and approach is totally different from that of the Nahj al-balaghah, whose approach is highly original and unprecedented. Only in the Holy Quran can be found a precedent for the Nahj al-balaghah. Apart from the Holy Quran, we do not find any other source that provides some ground for the discourses of the Nahj al-balaghah.
As pointed out earlier, some scholars, because of their failure to trace back to some earlier source the notions elaborated in the Nahj al-balaghah, have questioned the authenticity of ascription of these discourses to 'Ali ('a). They have supposed that these discourses appeared in a later period, after the appearance of the Mu'tazilites and assimilation of Greek thought, heedless of the saying:
The mean earth with the sublime heaven does not compare!
What ignorance to compare the Mu'tazilite and Greek ideas with the teachings of the Nahj al-balaghah !
The Nahj al-balaghah and the Notions of Kalam:
The Nahj al-balaghah, while it ascribes all the Attributes of perfection to God, the Exalted, negates any separation of these Attributes from His Essence and does not consider them as an appendage of Divine Essence. On the other hand, the Ash'arites, as we know, consider the Divine Attributes to be additional to Essence and the Mu'tazilites negate all Attributes.
The Ash'arite believes in Separation [of the Attributes from the Essence]
The Mu'tazilite speaks of subservience [of the Attributes to the Essence].
This has led some to imagine that the discourses found in the Nahj al-balaghah on this topic are fabrications of a later period under the influence of Mu'tazilite views; whereas, anyone with some insight can readily perceive that the Attributes negated by the Nahj al-balaghah with respect to Divine Essence are qualities of imperfection and limitation; for the Divine Essence, being infinite and limitless, necessitates identity of the Attributes with the Essence, not negation of the Attributes as professed by the Mu'tazilites. Had the Mu'tazilites reached such a notion they would never have negated the Divine Attributes considering them subservient to the Essence.
The same is true of the views on the createdness or temporality (huduth) of the Quran in the sermon 184. One may, possibly, imagine that these passages of the Nahj al-balaghah relate to the latter heated controversies among the Islamic theologians (mutakallimun) regarding the eternity (qidam) or temporality (huduth) of the Holy Quran, and which might have been added to the Nahj al-balaghah during the latter centuries. However, a little reflection will reveal that the discourses of the Nahj al-balaghah related to this issue have nothing to do with the debate on the Quran being either created or uncreated, which was a meaningless controversy, but relates to the creative command (amr takwini), and Will of the Almighty. 'Ali ('a) says that God's Will and His command represent Divine Acts and, therefore, are hadith and posterior to the Essence; for if the command and Will were co-eternal and identical with His Essence, they will have, necessarily, to be considered His associates and equals. 'Ali ('a) says:
When He decrees the creation of a thing, He says to it, "Be", and it assumes existence; but not through an audible voice which strikes the ear or a cry that can be heard. Indeed the speech of God, glory be to Him, is but His created Act, which did not exist before [it came into existence]. Had it (Divine speech) been itself eternal, it would be another god besides Him. (Sermon 186)
In addition, there are other musnad traditions on this subject related from 'Ali ('a), only some of which have been collected in the Nahj al-balaghah, and can be traced back to his time. On this basis, there is no room for doubting their genuineness. If any superficial resemblance is observed between the statements made by 'Ali ('a) and some views held by the Mu'tazilah, the probability to be allowed in this connection is that some of his ideas were adopted by the Mu'tazilah.
The controversies of the Muslim theologians (mutakallimun), both the Shi'ah and the Sunni, the Asha'irah as well as the Mu'tazilah, generally revolved around the doctrine of rational basis of ethical judgement concerning good and evil (al-husn wa al-qubh al-'aqliyyan). This doctrine which is not other than a practical principle operating in human society, is considered by the mutakallimun to be also applicable to the Divine sphere and govern the laws of creation; but we find no trace of it in the Nahj al-balaghah, similarly there is no sign of it in the Quran. Had the ideas and beliefs of the mutakallimun found their way into the Nahj al-balaghah, first of all the traces of this doctrine should have been found in that book.
The Nahj al-balaghah and Philosophical Concepts:
Some others, on coming across certain words such as 'existence' (wujud), 'non-existence' ('adam), 'temporality' (huduth) and 'pre-eternity' (qidam), and so on in the Nahj al-balaghah, have been led to assume that these terms entered the Muslim intellectual world under the influence of Greek philosophy and were inserted, unintentionally or intentionally, into the discourses of 'Ali ('a). If those who advocate this view had gone deeper into the meanings of these words, they would not have paid heed to such a hypothesis. The method and approach adopted in the arguments of the Nahj al-balaghah is completely different from that of the philosophers who lived before al-Sayyid al- Radi or during his time, or even those born many centuries after the compilation of the Nahj al-balalghah .
Presently, we shall not discuss the metaphysics of Greek or Alexandrian (Neo-Platonic) philosophy, but shall confine ourselves to the metaphysical views propounded by al-Farabi, Ibn Sina and Khwajah Nasir al-Din al-Tusi. Undoubtedly Muslim philosophers brought new problems into philosophy under the influence of Islamic teachings which did not exist before, and in addition to them, introduced radically original ways of demonstration and inference to explain and argue their point with regard to some other problems. Nevertheless, what we learn from the Nahj al-balaghah is obviously different from this approach. My teacher, 'Allamah Tabataba'i, in the preface to his discourse on the traditions of Islamic scholarship, writes:
These statements help in resolving a number of problems in the theological philosophy. Apart from the fact that Muslims were not acquainted with these notions and they were incomprehensible to the Arabs, basically there is no trace of them in the writings and statements of pre-Islamic philosophers whose books were translated into Arabic, and, similarly, they do not appear in the works of Muslim philosophers, Arab or Persian. These problems remained obscure and unintelligible, and every commentator discussed them according to his own conjecture, until the eleventh century of the Hijrah (17th century A.D.). Only then they were properly understood for the first time- namely, the problem of the True Unity (al-wahdat al-haqqah) of the Necessary Being (wajib al-wujud) (a non-numerical unity); the problem that the proof of the existence of the Necessary Being is identical with the proof of His Unity (since the Necessary Being is Absolute Existence, Him Being implies His Unity); the problem that the Necessary Existent is the known-in-His-Essence (ma'lum bil dhat); that the Necessary Being is known directly without the need of an intermediary, and that the reality of every thing else is known through the Necessary Being, not vice versa ... [7]
The arguments of the early Muslim philosophers like al-Farabi, Ibn Sina and Khwajah Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, such as the discussions on the Divine Essence and Attributes, such as Unity, Simplicity (basatah), Self-Sufficiency, Knowledge, Power, Will, Providence, and so on, revolve around the conception of the necessity of existence (wujub al-wujud), from which all of them are derived, and the necessity of existence itself is deduced indirectly. In this fashion it is demonstrated that the existence of all possible existents (mumkinat) cannot be explained without assuming the existence of the Necessary Being. Although the argument used for proving the truth of this cannot be called demonstration per impossible (burhan khulf) in view of its indirect mode of inference, it resembles burhan khulf and hence it fails to provide completely satisfactory demonstration, for it does not explain the necessity of existence of the Necessary Being. Ibn Sina in his al-'Isharat claims that he has succeeded in discovering "the Why?" (lima) of it and hence chooses to call his argument "burhan al-siddiqin" (burhan limmi, i.e. causal proof). However, the latter philosophers considered his exposition of "the Why?" (lima) as insufficient.
In the Nahj al-balaghah, necessity of existence is never used to explain the existence of the possible beings (mumkinat). That on which this book relies for this purpose is the real criterion of the necessity of existence, that is, the absolute reality and pure being of the Divine Essence.
'Allamah Tabataba'i, in the above-mentioned work, while explaining a hadith of 'Ali ('a) found in al-Tawhid of al-Shaykh al-Saduq, says:
The basis of our discussion rests upon the principle that Divine Being is a reality that does not accept any limits or restrictions whatsoever. Because, God, the Most Exalted, is Absolute Reality from Whom is derived the existence of all other beings within the ontological limits and characteristics peculiar to themselves, and their existence depends on that of the Absolute Being. [8]
In the Nahj al-balaghah the very basis of all discussions on Divine Essence rests on the position that God is Absolute and Infinite Being, which transcends all limits and finitude. No point of space or time, nor any thing is devoid of Him. He is with everything, yet no thing is with Him. Since He is the Absolute, and the Infinite, He transcends all time, number, limit and proximity (all kinds of quiddities). That is, time and space, number and limit are applicable to a lower stage i.e. stage of Divine Acts and creation. Everything is from Him and returns unto Him. He is the First of the first and the Last of the last. He precedes everything and succeeds everything.
This is the idea that forms the axis of all discourses of the Nahj al-balaghah, and of which there is no trace in the works of al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, al-Ghazali, and Khwajah Nasir al-Din al-Tusi.
As pointed out by 'Allamah Tabataba'i, these profound discussions of theology proper (ilahiyyat bil-ma'na al-'akhass) are based on a series of inter-related problems which have been posited in metaphysics (al-'umur al-'ammah). [9] An elaborate discussion of those theological problems and their relevant issues mentioned above is outside the scope of our present discussion.
There are two reasons for rejecting the claims that the theological discussions of the Nahj al-balaghah were inventions of later writers familiar with philosophical notions. Firstly, the kind of problems discussed in the Nahj al-balaghah were not at all raised by any philosopher till the time of al-Sayyid al-Radi, the compiler of the Nahj al-balaghah. That the Unity of the Necessary Being is not of the numerical kind and that Divine Essence precedes number; that the existence of the Necessary Being implies Its Unity; the simple reality of the Necessary Being; His immanence and other such notions were not known to philosophy during or before al-Sayyid al-Radi's times. Secondly, the axes of arguments presented in this book are altogether different from the axes of philosophical discussions which have been prevalent throughout history until the present day.
The Nahj al-balaghah and Western Philosophic Thought:
The Nahj al-balaghah has played a great role in the history of Eastern Philosophy. Mulla Sadra, who brought a revolution in theological thought (al-hikmat al-'ilahiyyah), was under profound influence of 'Ali's discourses. His method of argument with regard to the problems of tawhid is the method of inferring the Essence from the Essence, and also deducing the Attributes and Acts from the Essence, and all these arguments are based on the belief that there exists the Necessary Being only. These arguments are based on radically different general principles, which are elaborated in his system of metaphysics.
Eastern theological thought (al-hikmat al-'ilahiyyah) attained fruition and strength from the sources of Islamic teachings and was firmly established on unviolable foundations. However, theological philosophy in the West remained deprived of such source of inspiration. The widespread philosophical malaise of inclination towards materialism in the West has many causes whose discussion is outside the scope of our discourse. But we believe that the major cause of this phenomenon is the weakness and insufficiency of theological conceptions of Western religious thought. [10] Anyone interested in making a comparative study of the approaches pointed out in these chapters, should first study the arguments advanced by Western philosophers such as Anselm, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant and others for proving the existence of God and their discussions about acceptance or rejection of various arguments, then he should compare them with the burhan al-siddiqin argument advanced by Mulla Sadra under the inspiration of 'Ali's words. He would see for himself the wide chasm that separates the one from the other.
Notes:
[7] Maktab e tashayyu, No. 2 p. 120
[8] Ibid, p. 126
[9] Ibid, p. 157
[10] See Murtada Mutahhari, Ilal e garayesh beh maddigari (The causes of inclination towards Materialism), under the chapter: Naresa iha ye mafahi me falsafiI (The inadequacies of [Western] Philosophical Ideas)
