Transcendent Wisdom as a Method of Exegesis or Ṣadrā’s Commentary on Kulainī’s Kitāb al-Kāfī Revisited

Mullā Ṣadrā’s commentary on Kulainī’s Kitāb al-Kāfī deals with three of theeight books of its uṣūl part – Kitāb al-ʿaql wa faḍāʾil al-ʿilm, Kitāb al-tawḥīd,and Kitāb al-ḥuğğa. The discussion is dominated by several principal themes:the nature and manifestation of God’s unity, His essential and activeattributes, creation of the world and its constituents, modulation ofexistence, substantial motion (as the pivotal feature of the corporeal andpsychic world), human knowledge and its salvatory role, prophethood andimamate. This paper shows that like al-Ġazālī, in his exegesis, Ṣadrā treadsthe path of wide generalizations and approximations, but places these in thecontext of Twelver Shīʿism. However, the principal difference between alĠazālīand Ṣadrā consists in the latter’s endorsement of philosophicaldemonstration (burhān) as a valid method of unification (tawḥīd). Accordingto Ṣadrā, logical reasoning can point to the uniqueness of the source ofexistence – however, it falls short of providing the unifier with a vision ofthe individual oneness (al-waḥda al-shakhṣiyya) of existence.

کلیدواژه ها:

Mullā Ṣadrā ، Kulainī ، Kitāb al-Kāfī ، Exegese ، Transzendente Weisheit ، tawḥīd ، demonstration ، Ġazālī