This piece of work is dedicated to the spirit of a sage, a "traditionally postmodern" who, as a "center," suffered persecution at the hand of the "periphery," and went beyond temporality and to all passionate Iranian students in search of knowledge and social change.

 

 

Toward Sadra-Khaldunic Paradigm of Social Psychology:Nafs Shenasi Ijtemai 

 

By:Dr. Hasan Shahpari

 

                        Therefore recite of the Koran so much as it is feasible.

                        He knows that some of you are sick, and others

                        Journeying in the land, seeking the bounty of God,

                        And others fighting in the way of God.

                        So recite of it as much as is feasible.

A. S. Arbety, The Koran Interpreted, London: Allen & Unwin, 1955, I, p.29, II, pp. 309-10.              

 

                        Essentially, unveiling (kashf) is destruction of the veiled object,

Just as the veil destroys revelation (mukashafat), and just as, for instance, one who is near cannot bear to be far, and one who is far

cannot bear to be near.

KASHF Al-MAHJUB, Hujwiri, p. 27)

 

 

PRELUDE

 

In the Quranic passage, there are references to three selves: spiritual self, material self and social self, spiritual whereby the reciting of the Qur'an or fighting in the way of God are concerned; there is a reference to a social component whereby the self is engaged in journeying in search of bounty of God or in William James's schema, in search of material because one needs to join others in seeking bounty cannot remain alone or being sick (what social psychologists refer to playing role of a sick person or sick-role as a social position).  To achieve harmony among the three selves depends upon whether an Islamic jurist, a theologian, a sociologist, a philosopher, particularly a political philosopher, a Sufi, a theosophist or a social psychologist would define it. The three selves, with their modalities, imply individual choices rather than collectivity, since as an agency of God, individual is endowed, on one side, to create pluralistic societies, as an image of God's creation, and, on the other side, we are charged to know one another.  Modern symbolic interactionism school of social psychology that rests partially upon legacy of Cooley asserts, "We are looking glass of each other." 

 

A Note on Social Psychology

 

What is Social Psychology, a discipline that can be approached either from psychology perspective or sociology?  What do we mean by theorizing a Social Psychology based on Mulla Sadra's Science of Nafs and Ibn Khaldun's Historical Sociology?  Does the Nafs theory of Sadra is comparable to William James' self-theory or embraces a range of issues deeper than modern notion of psyche?  Does Nafs theory, similar to William James theory, include social self?  If not then what major concern Ibn Khaldun pointed out in his sociology in order to provide us a basis for bridging the gap between ideas of two Muslims theoreticians of Nafs Shenasi and empirical sociology?  What are implications of such a new discipline for making sense of who we are, how we define ourselves, how do we evaluate ourselves and how important are social categories such as sex, race, religion or our nationality?  Finally, are our social institutions including religion, economy, politics, family and, especially, education ready to absorb recommendations of such a science?    

 

What forces impel "me" to speak of a science that I call Nafs Shenasi Ijtemai?  Although it is not so well known in the circle of Iranian social scientists but it can arouse their interests in interdisciplinary approach for understanding of empirical reality of human being through social psychology from Islamic perspective?  The second major force relates to why am I appropriating a theistic concept such as Nafs instead of a rather well–known and well-fit term such as psychology?  What does my view entailed is not a return to a morally conservative sphere or cultural and educational irrelevancy.  Following one of my favorite authors, Alasdair Macintyre, my inclination for retaining a traditional religious vocabulary like Nafs is due partly to the impoverishment of concepts such as "utility," "pleasure," and "happiness," concepts that once could plainly distinguished as for example in Islam, necessities (daruriyyat), needs (hajiyyat), and luxuries, whose domains were not blurred in contrast to modernity. But these terms had moral connotations too.  Ibn Khaldun, for instance, asserts, "luxury corrupts the character, through luxury the soul acquiring diverse kinds of evil and sophisticated customs" which reminds us "conspicuous consumption' in the capitalist world today.  I submit that Macintyre's substantive argument relates to the mergence of new theism, but it throws light on my convictions.  He says:

 

The inclination of the new theology to retain the traditional religious vocabulary must be due partly to the failure of the atheists to provide a vocabulary for the traditional and religious and moral questions.  Indeed as other writers observed, even the ideologies that have provided limited contemporary secular vocabulary for such questions tend to relapse into religious forms-I refer to psychoanalysis in particular, but also to Marxism (Macintyre @ Riceur, pp.59-54).  

 

INTRODUCTION: Unveiling the Hijab

 

According to Hujwiri, a Sufi Muslim, there are two veils: one is the "veil of covering" (hijab-i rayni), which can never be removed and the other is the "veil of clouding"(hijab-i ghaini), which is quickly removed.  My intention in this paper is to make an attempt to remove the second hijab from separation of two social science disciplines: sociology and psychology and get them as near as possible to each other to bear each other.  But, in contrast to Hujwiri's dichotomy, reality of modern inertia for specialization and minute division of labor, as both Ibn Khaldun and Durkheim noticed, indicate that unveiling cannot be done quickly.  It took many years for the Western scholarship to come to grip and synthesize overlapping components of sociology and psychology; it began as early as twentieth century.  In our view there are overlapping and mutual concerns between Ibn Khaldun's Prolegomena or his marvelous introduction to science of society and Sadra's Ilm-al Nafs or what I call Nafs Shenasi.  A few words about the history of social psychology are required at the outset of this work.

 

Historical Antecedents in Iran

 

The early attempt to introduce social psychology from psychology perspective was done by the Professor Shapurian.  He is a noted scholar, researcher and educator, trained in German school of Gestalt psychology and among the first generation of Iranian psychologists.  By translation of the James Berg's Great Men of Social Psychology from English to Persian, Professor Shapurian introduced four major paradigms to his readers including: Freud's Psychoanalysis, Symbolic Interactionism of Mead, Kurt Lewin's Field Theory and Skinner's Behaviorism.  

 

The Great Men of Social Psychology, a concise and lucid piece of work that was published in 1976, just three years before the Islamic Revolution (1979), remained on the shelves of the publisher and never got publicity partly due to the early-unwanted retirement of the translator, a faculty of Shiraz University.

 

In Iran, at Tehran University, Professor Shapurian narrates, Professor Siasi, a French graduate in the field of French literature who became the first chairman of the newly established department of psychology coined the term "Ravhn Shenasi" to replace the term Ilm al-Nafs.  Ilm al-Nafs was taught as a part of curriculum at the Department of Literature and Education in the College of Adabiyat (College of Literature).  Tehran University, at outset at 1934, followed the French tradition of undifferentiating literature from education and psychology, a tradition that lasted to the end of Nineteenth century in France.  Before Professor Siasi being appointed as a chairman, the term Ilm al-Nafs was used as being based upon Ibn Sina and Sadra's conception of psychology.  Notwithstanding Professor Siasi's interest to replace the term Ilm al-Nafs with his coined term "Ravhn Shenasi," he wrote a textbook titled Ilm al-Nafs from Educational Perspective.  Finally, the term "psychology," through translation into Persian was rendered "Ravhn Shenasi" and replaced the term Ilm al-Nafs. 

 

Of course, Ravhn, an Old Persian word meaning "soul," different from Ruh, an Arabic term and "Jaan" a Persian term both meaning spirit, was a nationalistic choice to replace Nafs, the Arabic term for soul, mind and psyche.  Still to this day the Iranian scholars use the term Hormat-e Nafs as an equal term for the English term Self-Esteem.  It seems there is a common belief that Ilm al-Nafs, due to objectivity of Nafs and the claim for its scientific study, since every human being is aware of functions of Nafs, covers a wide range of phenomena that Ravhn does not.  That is the case, as it will be delineated later in relation to analysis of Ibn Khaludn's work as a common ground between two Muslim scholars i.e., Sadra and Ibn Khaldun.  However, closing the gap that exists, or overarching between two fields of social sciences, as I have envisioned, seems to be not arduous task given Khaldunic historical sociological interest in Nafs and Sadra's exposition and formulation of the same subject.  Due to my paradigmatic claim, then my suggested paradigm will be subjected to modification and falsifiability.  If our paradigm passes the tests of objectivity, implying causal inferences, then we will be able produce hypotheses. The scope of vision in this work is to embrace critical analysis of the readers including an interested peer group.  The scope of values is based on upholding the legacies of Islamic scholarship to integrate with modern and post-modern advances in area of social sciences and humanities.  The mission is to provide a paradigm for further collaborations between departments of sociology and psychology for analysis of both co-operation and tensions that exist between the individual and society.  In regard to the mission, the issue is that "What" we consider worthy of thinking.  How to connect the facts comes later.  The question of "What" we have chosen to think will create a roadmap or paradigm that is called Nafs Shenasi-y Ijtemai.  It sounds innovative and provocative to see sociological and psychological marvels and capacities that these two towering figures offer to us.  These two were independent from each other and living about two centuries apart from each other but, strangely enough, died with similar combination of numbers: Ibn Khaldun died at 1406 and Sadra died at 1604.  

 

For the sake clarity, I should mention that this piece of work is initially exploration of components of Nafs Shenasi Ijtemai.  Then an attempt will be made on synthesizing Sadra's conception of psychology and Ibn Khaldun's historical sociology.  Hence, my intention is to secure the readers' and my own intellectual needs more for existential nurturing.  The reality is that Sadra provided us a philosophical interpretation concerning the existence: Existence is of two kinds, one is permanent–invariable- like intellect and the second one is fluid-variable-like natural dispositions.  However, understanding of existence in terms of influences of social factors and in relation to social context is what I intend to elucidate.  Scientific method requires that we include objective observation that should be done systematically to ensure that observations are (a) representative of larger domain that is of interest and (b) made with sufficient procedural control that the obtained result are valid (have no plausible explanation) and can be analyzed in terms of cause and effect if that is the focus of research question (Jahnke, p.2).  It is enough to say here that both Ibn Khaldun and Sadra have paid attention to scientific method as my exposition of Sadra' Method for Social Psychological Research indicate (See the foot note.  Also see :Ilm al-Nafs, p.44).  Sufficient to say that both scholars' focal subject was to know things through cause and effect in philosophical sense that has been greatly elaborated and advanced for social science research.  Knowing about the outside world as well as actions of other individuals, as standing outside of the observer, or societies under observation have been a recurring theme to reconnect us with transcendental.  The question is that if we participate in our actions do we participate in the other's actions too?  How these connections can be explained through social psychology? 

 

Connectedness: Ontological Stratification

 

I hope that my presumed intellectual task for the sake of connectedness, or what Ibn Khaldun called "itesal," rather than being accidental in form and substance, be perceived as adventurous.  As Muhaqqiq observes:

 

The question of connectedness, how are we connected to outside world, is a fundamental subject for the realist, positivists, and phenomenologists.  In Sadra's philosophy, authenticity belongs to the existence and manifestation of every object is related to the existence of that object. There is objective existence, independent of us, and subjective existence that is dependent on us (Muhaqqiq, p.15). 

 

By juxtaposing Sadra's views of reality and the Western phenomenological approach, we witness that unlike phenomenology, Sadra believes in independence of objective existence and like phenomenology, since there are varieties of objects with their manifestations then he believes in multiple realities.  The conclusion is that while Sardra's foundation for social psychology is lingering, on one side, on phenomenology it anchors, on the other side, on objectivity of a realist.  That is why Sadra, in spite of domineering position of the ‘ulma in homogenization of followers, takes sides with individual consciousness.  To elucidate the point of bifurcation between phenomenology and Sadra's views, let me register here the position of phenomenological social psychologists including Alfred Schutz, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann who have been influenced by Edmund Husserl's phenomenology: In domain of phenomenological social psychology, according to which the role and perceptions of individual dominate his/her group memberships the subjective standpoint of individual actor is the central focus of attention: 

 

Unlike a more objectivist approach, which views the social world as a reality that exists independently of any individual perception of it, phenomenology sees that reality as constituted by our view of it.  There is therefore, not a single, objective social reality that can be analyzed in the same manner that a scientist might analyze physical reality.  Rather, there are realities; indeed pushed to an extreme, one might say that there are as many social realities as there are perspectives from which to view them (Hewitt, p.15-16).

 

An example from the pre-Islamic society show that the individual had multiple realities and also multiple gods but the individual was without identity, standing below gods in an ascending order.  By coming of Islam, the last stage for this society became able to provide some notion of selfhood, to move the individual human being from a "thing" to an "object" to which attention should be paid.  On this issue Ibn Khaldun's words should be quoted in detail because he "connects" us to Sadra's notion of Nafs or capacities of individual:

 

Beginning with the world of the body and sensual perception, and therein first with these world of the visible elements, one notices how these elements are arranged gradually and continually in an ascending order, from earth to water, to air and to fire.  Each one of the elements is prepared to be transformed into the next higher or lower one, and sometimes is transformed.  The higher one is always finer than the one preceding it.  They are finer than anything else.  The word "connection" with regard to these created things means that the last stage of each group is fully prepared to become the first stage of the next group (Muqaddimah, p.75). 

 

After recounting the importance of manifold influences that exist in various worlds, from the animal world to human world with characterization of soul or Nafs, Ibn Khaldun writes:

 

All this is evidence of the fact that there is something that exercises an influence and is different from bodily substances.  This is something spiritual.  It is connected with the created things, because the various worlds must be connected in their existence.  This spiritual thing is the soul, which has perception and causes motion (Muqaddimah, ibid.)

 

The soul, after perfection goes to higher level, the world of angels, and it is where the notions of descending and ascending appear in Muqaddimah that is another linkage or connection to Sadra's views about ascending and descending arches.  Similar to Sadra, Ibn Khaldun's perspective is based on both grading and hierarchy, so he finds such a perspective being applicable to human capacities that starts from sense perception and goes higher to thinking as follow:

 

The powers of sensual perception are graded and ascend to the highest power, that is, the power of thinking, for which there exists the term ‘rational power'.  Thus, the power of external sense perception, with the organ of vision, hearing, and all the other (organs) lead up to inward (perception). (ibid).  

 

Sociologically speaking, one innovation of Ibn Khaldun, among others is that he connects us to a very important concept of "commonsense," the practical intelligence, as manifestation of the inward sense, a unique human condition that later on in hand of William James postulated in his Pragmatism.  Ibn Khaldun believes that:

 

The first inward sense is "common sense," that is, the power that simultaneously perceives all objects of sensual perception, whether they belong to hearing, touching, or anything else.   In this respect, it differs from the power of external sense perception, as the objects of sensual perception do not all crowd upon all external sense perception at one and the same time.

The common sense transfers the perceptions to the imagination, which is the power that pictures an object of sensual perception in the soul, as it is, abstracted from all external matter (ibid).

 

In a cool manner of a detached scientist, Ibn Khaldun takes us to the operating machinery of the organ, the hard ware, the brain, which is responsible for mental activities, the place for imagination and common sense, where the mind and body get connected, composed of a "front stage" and a "back stage":

 

The organ for activity of these two powers (common sense and imagination) is the first cavity of the brain.  The front part of that cavity is for common sense and back part for imagination (ibid. my emphasis).

 

Nafs and Social Relations

 

For Ibn Khaldun, social relations such as friendship, hostility, compassion and fear are perceptive and depend on our "estimative power"; we estimate, or calculate approximately, and draw inferences from behavior of others, a friend or an enemy.  This topic of social inference and trait inference processes that comprises "Behavior Interpretation" and through process ends in "Revision of Initial Inference" recently received attention from social inference researchers (For example see: Krull and Erickson work on Social Inferences).  According to Krull:

 

A number of cross-cultural investigations have found that non-Westerners tend to form judgments that are situational than those of the Westerners.  Schweder and Bourne have suggested that non-Western people may be "culturally primed to see context and social relationships as a necessary condition for behavior," whereas Westerners may be "culturally primed to search for abstract summaries of the autonomous individual"(Krull, p.57).

 

Regarding social inference, Ibn Khaldun drew a general description that includes both Westerners and non-Westerners similar to Sadra's conception of Nafs that is all-inclusive.  By suggesting the term "estimative power" that in our vocabulary is a base for interpretation of other individuals' behavior, Ibn Khaldun came close to Sadra's emphasis on the role of imagination.  Although both authors are non-Westerners and brought up in an Islamic culture, both showed interests in the process and the outcome of intellection implying, what I call, Sadra-Khaldunic Theory of Desire for Ascending through Thinking," which is a purposive cognitive theory.  In other words, my interpretation of Ibn Khaldun's statement where he uses the term "reflection=interpretation" is that since he uphold the power of thinking that is motivated to ascend, so interpretation of other's behavior and revising our inferences about him/her is a cognitive process, the purpose of which is intellection.  He states:

 

All these powers (common sense, imagination, estimation, memory) lead up to the power of thinking.  Its organ is the middle cavity of the brain.  It is the power that causes reflection to be set in motion and leads toward intellection.  The soul is constantly moved by it, as the result of its constitutional desire to think (Ibid, my emphasis).

 

Ibn Khaldun's ontological exchange theory of thinking, 400 years before Adam Smith's economic view on reward, is based on the premise of human natural disposition that seeks reward through three stages:

 

The constitutional desire to think wants to be free from the grip of (lower human) powers and the human kind of preparedness.  It wants to proceed to active intellection by assimilating itself to the highest spiritual group… and to get into the first order of the spiritualia by perceiving them without the help of bodily organs.  Therefore, the soul is constantly moving in that direction. It exchanges all humanity and human spirituality for angelicality of the highest stage, without the help of any acquired faculty but by virtue of a primary natural disposition that God has placed in it (Muqaddimah, p.77).

 

Here, Ibn Khldun categorizes the human soul, ready for exchange, into three kinds and prepares us to connect, once again, to Sadra.  The first one is a product of thinking in the body, the second is the product of thinking beyond the body and the third on is full exchange of humanity altogether, both corporeal and spiritual for the highest order.

 

Modes of Observation

 

Good habits in scientific instruction, in the crafts, and in all other customary activities, add insight to the intellect of a man and enlightenment to his thinking, since the soul thus obtains a great number of habits (Muqaddimah,  p.342). 

 

            Along the above quotation, Ibn Khaldun connected the soul with technical habits and scientific instructions.  This genuine conception of connection, as we see below, embraces both categories of thinking in the body and thinking beyond the body. It is through these activities that the mind, self and society come into interactions with one another.

 

Following connectedness of stages to one another, where end of one is potentially the start of another stage, we can use approximation or estimative power to compare similarities and differences between Sadra's and Ibn Khaldun's conceptions of mind/body connectedness, goals, boundary domain as well as domain of scholarship. 

 

 

 

1-Thinking in the Body

-Soul Moves Downward toward perceptions of the senses and imagination, formation of ideas with help of memory and estimative power. 

-This stage coincides with the Descending Arch in Sadra.

-Method of Observation: Eternal Senses, non-Intuition.

-Highest Goal: to achieve the perception of scholars.

-Domain of interest of every scholar as well as Social Psychologists or

Nafs Shenasan-e Ijtemai. 

-Domain Boundary: Limited

 

2-Thinking Beyond the Body

-This stage corresponds to the Ascending Arch of Sadra.

-Soul Moving Up toward spiritual intellection.     

-Method of Observation: Inward Observation.

-Highest Goal: Divine Knowledge.

-Domain of interest of saint and mystics. 

-Open partially to scholars of Humanities and Social Sciences including Psychologists, Social Psychologists, Psychoanalysts and Sociologists.

-Domain Boundary: Unlimited as to their beginning and their end.

 

3-Full Exchange

-This stage corresponds to the apex of Sadra's Ascending Arch.

-Soul achieves the highest peak.

-Method of Observation: Simultaneous Ascending-Descending Observations, inductive-deductive synthesized: glimpses the highest group within their own stage.

-Highest Goal: To exchange humanity altogether for angelicality.

-Domain of Prophets. 

-Closed to scholars of Humanities and Social Sciences, yet open to research the consequences and functions of prophecy. 

-Domain Boundary: Unlimited.

 

Methodology: Phenomenological/ Functionally Analytical/Realist and Historical.

 

Sadra's expositions of Nafs in what he calls The Science of Nafs or Ilm-al Nafs is the result of his focus on the phenomenon of Nafs as a psychological supra category.  It is noteworthy that Muslim scholars called many intellectual activities as "science" implying that the density of thought can be merged into the transcendental as well as non-transcendental, speculative and empirical.  Muslim scholars had insatiable interests in epistemic structure of knowledge that continues to this day.  Mohhaqqiq Damad, in his writing on The Reality and Nature of Knowledge, following Sadra, has suggested that Nafs, in Sadra's view, represents God on the earth and, similar to God, is creative.  Since God creates the world and bestows objective existence to the creature Nafs (soul), in its turn by imagination, creates mental existence (Mohaqqiq Damad, pp.11-15).  Given different primordial orientations, Damad's view is partly reminiscent of Durkheimian conception of society as representing God.  Yet, Nafs as an agency can create society in terms of both empirical and speculative.  Personal knowledge of the phenomenon of Nafs directed Sadra's observations regarding him and people surrounding him, then it is deducible that he, sociologically speaking, has been engaged in group activities.  Sadra defines knowledge of Nafs, as follow:

 

Nafs, whether as an essence, or from the view of actions or attributes, is a ladder for knowledge of transcendent God.  Because the one becomes knowledgeable of unity of Nafs knows that it is a Jouhar that thinking, apprehension, imagination, sensation, movement, growth, smelling, tasting, touching of objects are its functions, while these actions, because of or by power and force are produced by him/her, such a person by knowledge of Nafs and its domination over actions get to the knowledge of God and knows the meaning of "nothing happen except by existence of God"(Sadra, p. 6).

   

It is in the light of William James' idea of tripartite self that we are able to interpret the Quranic passage quoted at the outset as God's referring to "empirical self" the way that the self is conceived to be fluid.  In addition, in discussion of refinement of James' ideas we should look into the collective self that is a missing concept in Sadra.  Could Ibn Khaldunic conception of ‘asabiyya, group cohesion and loyalty as well as importance of the notion of fluidity as being proposed by Sadra through his concept of Harkat-e Jouhari (transsubstanial motion) be integrated?  Social cohesion is the most difficult term in social sciences to measure because it is embedded with varieties of emotions.  We join different groups due to complex synergies of sensuality, illusion, imagination and rationality.  From Sadra's analysis of quadruple functionality of Nafs, sensual, illusive, imaginative and rational, we can infer that he envisioned  "Existential and Functional Symbolic Interactionism," according to which "authenticity belongs to existence and manifestation of every thing related to the existence of that thing." But since Nafs is representative and every representation can be understood either in form of objective or subjective, then the mental existence of things or the subjectivity of our feelings in-group participation should be communicated in symbolic forms.  However, the major contention between Ibn Khaldun and Sadra on issues of "Things Are as They Are" and "Things Change as We Change" remains unresolved.  

                       

 

 

 

 

Major Characteristics, Commonality and Differences

 

 

Ibn Khaldun:Cold Sociology:                             Mulla Sadra: Hot Psychology:

Things Are as They Are                                                Things Change as We Change

(1332-1406)                                                                  (d. 1640)

-Roots of Social Environment:                           -Roots of Social Environment:

-Pastoralism and Scripturalism                          -Urban Life

-Urban Life                                                                  -Non-Evolutionary

-Townsmen/Tribesmen Contrasted                    -Unity of Being

-A Positive, Descriptive Sociologist       -Combined Shi'I scriptualism, theology, and mystical reflections.

-Bedouin: Intense loyalty to family and tribe       -Philosophically Psychologist

-Sedentary: Loyalties Disappear            -Harkat-e Jouhary

-Major Social Force: Social Cohesion                     (Transsubstantial Movement or 

-Historical Laws are Unchanging                           Constant Change and Becoming of this Imperfect World of Generation and Corruption).

 

                                                                                   -Individual Religious Consciousness

                                                                                   -Loyalty to the Imams

-Mode of Argument: Rational/

 Non-Quantitative         -Mode of Argument: Synthetic and Analytical Quantitative and Non-Quantitative

-Emphasis on "soul"      -Emphasis on Nafs (soul, or mind)

-Tripartite and ascending/descending soul          -Quadruple Nafs (sensual, imaginative, illusive, rational) 

(senses and imagination, spiritual intellection,      -Descending Arch and Ascending Arch    

angelicality).

 

-Sufi and Maliki                                                            -Sage, Shi'ite,

-Habits and soul are connected :Once the soul  -Two kinds of existence: Permanent and                                    fluid.  Intellect is permanent and temperaments             are fluid.

gets used to something, it becomes part of

its make-up and nature, because the soul

is able to take on many colorings.

-Subjects of Study: Human Civilization and          -Subjects of Study: Philosophy, Gnosis,                                    

Social Organization                                            Theology and Psychology   

-Method: Cause and Effect and Correlation,          -Method: Logical Demonstration,

A posteriori                                                                    Cause and Effect, A priori, teleological.          

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion: Nafs Shenasiy Ijtemai

 

Within the context of group loyalty, each individual participate according to his/her sensual, illusive, imaginative and rational capacities.  Due to Harkate-Jouhari's operating energy, Nafs remains fluid and functional, then group social cohesion or ‘asabyyia, which relies upon social structure and culture of a society depends on the self-awareness of each of individual.  Changes in social structure and culture affects Nafs but it maintains its forces unified, as the originator of all perceptions and comprehension (Idrak).  If descended, and then it is doomed to move-upward.  The sociological corollary to the theory of Nafs is downward mobility and upward mobility of individual in his/her society. 

 

Meditation on Sadra's life is a learning lesson of social psychology.  He was empirically experiencing the relationship among his mind, his self and his Safavid society, yet he did not survive the end of an era pronounced in the separation of religion from the state.   Both Ibn Khaldun's and Sadra's life history are definitely embodied social psychology in practice.  It is imaginative that if Ibn Khaldun was contemporary to Sadra, a Sunni and a Shi'ite, a historical sociologist and a Nafs Shenas-philosopher, they could create the unprecedented process of prospective Nafs Shenasi Ijtemai because this multidisciplinary science is an exemplary pursuit of scholarship that can redefine and introduce pluralism as a significant endeavor of individual quest for spiritual, empirical and social quests.

 

 

 

Notes:                    

 

 

                                                     

1-Al-Hujwiri, ‘Ali B. Uthman Al-Jullabi.  Kash Al-Mahjub (The Revelation of Mystery). Translated From Persian By: Reynold A. Nichoson.  Hermes Publishers: Tehran, 2003.

2-Brown, Jonathan, D. "The Nature of the Self: The Nature of the Me" in Social Psychology, Annual Editions, Fourth Edition, Dushkin / McGrawHill 2001, pp. 9-15.

3-Hewitt, John P. Self and Society: A Symbolic Interactionist Social Psychology. Eighth Edition, Allyn and Bacon: Boston. 2000.

4-Ibn Khaldun. The Muqaddimah.  Translated by Franz Rosenthal, edited and abridged by N.J. Dawood.  Bollingen Series: Princeton University Press, 1981.

5-Jahnke, John C.@ Ronald H. Nowaczyk, Cognition. Prentice-Hall: New Jersey, 1988.

6-Mohaqqiq Damad, S. M. "The Reality and Nature of Knowledge" in Kheradnameh-e Sadra, Spring June 2001, Vol.6, No.23, pp. 12-15.

9-Mulla Sadra. The Psychology of Sadr al-Din Shirazi, ASFAR. Vol.  II, III.  Translated by Jawad Mosleh, Tehran, 1977.

 

Sadra's distinction between two kinds of existence, invariable and variable, with some modifications of concepts, has scientific applications for research where hypothesis testing should be carried out.  Sadra states that every movable, or dependent variable in sociological terms, needs a mover or an independent variable. And end of each movable needs an immovable mover that is more complex formula than the relationships between dependent and independent variable (ASFAR, p.45).  Thus, his suggested method for research can be envisioned as follow:

 

1-Independent (intellect, or rational thinking)-----------------àDependent variables and,

2-Dependent Variable---- -----------------àEnds in Independent/Dependent Variable.

 

One simple example is that a "rational" individual buys a house, the purchases of which depends on his/her rational decision-making.  The house that represents rationality manifests combination of an independent and dependent variable.

 

 

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