The Contemporary Significance of Mulla Sadra's Existential Philosophy: Collaboration of Islamic and Christian Philosophers

 

By: Prof. George McLean

 

 

     This paper concerns the contemporary significance of Mulla Sadra's existential philosophy.

 

     Part I reviews the general crisis generated at this turn of the millennia by the reduction of reason to an interplay of clear but empty concepts. We have in our day Mulla Sadra's description of the meaninglessness of the pursuit of essence alone. The general response must be a revival of the sense of existence, first uncovered by the early Church Fathers.

 

     Part II studies the significance of existence in the medieval Islamic and Christian efforts to respond in philosophy to the requirement of eschatology for a human person that is real, free and responsible before God -- a matter of no less significance in our day for life in society.

 

     Part III will suggest an aesthetic consciousness for elaborating Mulla Sadra's existential sense of the dynamic emergence of the human person in fulfillment of the work of God's creation. In sum, the paper will move first from essence to existence, second from existence to the human person and third from the human person to the realization of divine Providence.

  

 

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