From a Sadraean Point of View Toward an Ontetic Elimination of the Subjectivistic Self
By Mahmoud Khatami PhD, DPhil
Introducing the Problem
In this introductory chapter, I will try to elucidate the problematic aspect of the self by retracing three main movements in modern Western thought. Our aim is
(i) to show how the modern idea of self has risen philosophically,
(ii) how its crucial aspect is hidden in an ontological gap within the epistemology of the self, and
(iii) to provide a proper background for my later conclusions as to how to remedy this gap.
1. 1. Primary Considerations
Among several interpretations of the nature of modern Western philosophy, there are those that would consider it to be a history of subjectivism.1 There are different versions of this attitude, all of which intend to overcome the “subject” as it has risen in modern Western humanism.2 Though we are not concerned here with these interpretations and their critical remarks on the nature of modern thought, we may define modern subjectivism by two characteristics:
(i) it is ego-centric and
(ii) it is epistemological.3
It would seem that those critics who find a crisis in the basis of modern thought agree that these two points are basic characteristics of modern Western subjectivism. We would go a step further, and (revising Heidegger4) remark that the crisis is crucially rooted in an ontological gap in the epistemology of the modern self.
Descartes, the father of modern Western thought, gave cogito priority over sum in his Meditations. This became a turning point for the movement that crystallised in Kant’s Copernican Revolution by which metaphysics was identified with epistemology. This was the official neglecting of “sum” which detached epistemology from ontology, implying that cogito can be considered without any need for “sum”, and ultimately dismissed. As a whole, existence became a category of our understanding along with and amongst many other categories. It becomes a mere copula picked up from judgement, and hence this doctrine have been followed in Western philosophy (excluding neothomism and existentialism), viewing existence in a nominalistic form.5
One of the immediate consequences of detaching epistemology from ontology has been the dismissal of the “being” of the self. Beginning with Descartes, the history of modern Western thought established on the Cartesian Cogito whose ego, at least as its historical fate testifies, 6 was uprooted from its being. The profound ontological gap felt in the basis of modern thought is hidden in this uprooted ego, in this Cogito detached from sum: the beingless self, or, in Heidegger’s term, the worldless subject. The Cartesian Cogito dismissed the realm of existence and reduced the self to a res cogitans that implicitly erased all properties traditionally assigned to the self as soul,7and placed it in contrast to res extensa.
Contemporary thought has suffered from the weight of difficulties raised by such a dualism. Cogito, the turning point of Western thought, plunged into the maze of the subject-object dualism in which modern thought has been involved.8
From this standpoint, and relying on the authority of these thinkers here, we can chart a dialectical line of thought concerning the self, beginning with Descartes’ Meditations and ending with Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations:
(i) A thesis indicating that the self is a positive conscious thing, a res cogitans. (Cartesian rationalists).
(ii) An anti-thesis indicating that such a self can not logically be found (Hume) and is void (Eliminationism), and that it is only psychologically (Hume) or verbally (Eliminationism) supposed.9
(iii) A synthesis indicating that such a self should be supposed over or beyond our thought and actions. Though we are not able to find this; it is a transcendental and logical condition for our thought and actions (Kant and Husserl).
These three positions can be classified as the major lines of the subjectivistic theories of the self in modern thought. All these positions seem to be trapped within the ontological gap we mentioned above. All of them have neglected the “being” of the self, the sum, and devoted themselves to the order of conceptual reflective knowledge, the Cogito, presupposing the distinction between epistemology and ontology, and the priority of the former over the latter.
Thus considered, one may see the modern epistemology of the self as a continual challenge to the same problem: Descartes posited an isolated substance, a beingless subject, as “I”; and the epistemologists after him made challenges for or against this “I”. In this research we consider Husserl, whose Cartesian Meditations end up with a radical idealism on the self, as characteristic figure of this subjectivistic movement.
Meanwhile, my purpose is to see the possibility of bridging the ontological gap in the modern theories of the self by application of the insights gained from the transcendent tradition in Persian philosophy. Before expounding a transcendent account of the self, we will offer a brief analysis of the three major lines of Western subjectivism identified above. For convenience we term these
(1) substantialising the self,
(2) psychologising the self and
(3) transcendentalising the self.
These will be explored through the writings of Descartes, Hume, Kant and Husserl. The first aim of this analysis is to clarify the problematic within diverse and conflicting modern thoughts about the self. The second aim is to prepare a proper context for our later proposal that many of these apparently conflicts can be integrated and brought to completion on the basis of the apparently widespread experience of the self identified in the transcendent philosophy. We will suggest that these apparent conflicts can be resolved by underpinning them with a transcendent account of the self.
1. 2. Substantialising the Self
The substantialisation of the self has a history as old as that of philosophy. It is first presented by Plato, then systematised by Aristotle. In modern times it has gained fresh significance through Descartes’ methodological meditations. In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes engaged in a search for knowledge that would prove to be absolutely certain. He employed scepticism as a method, doubting everything he could in order to see if anything remained as certain and stable.
“Archimedes asked only for one fixed and immovable point so as to move the whole earth from its place; so I may have great hopes if I find even the least thing that is unshakeably certain.” 10
Using this method, Descartes felt that he discovered an absolute, unshakeable foundation for knowledge in the knowledge of his own self-existence. He doubted everything, and then noticed that the very act of doubting was his act, and that even doubting his own non-existence would therefore prove his existence. For “if I did convince myself of anything, I must have existed,” and similarly, if anyone else convinced him of anything, he must also still exist.
“Thus I. . . must at length conclude that this proposition “I am”, “I exist”, whenever I utter it or conceive it in my mind, is necessarily true.”11
On this argument, then, “I exist” is a necessary truth whenever thought or uttered. It is true whenever conceived, and its contradiction “I do not exist” is false whenever conceived (for the very act of conceiving it implies its falsity).
Having established self-existence as beyond doubt Descartes asked “what is this “I” that necessarily exists?’ 12 He noted that his body and even the entire physical universe might conceivably be mere dreams, “nonentities” in themselves. As such they stand in sharp contrast to the certainty of his own consciousness. For while these possibly illusory objects of awareness might disappear from his consciousness, his own consciousness itself could not. Thus:
“At this point I come to the fact that there is consciousness…of this and this only I cannot be deprived.” 13 “What then am I? A conscious being.” 14
“That is, a being that doubts, asserts, denies, understands a few things, is ignorant of many, is willing or unwilling; and that has also imagination and sense. . . In these few words I have given a list of all the things I really know, or at least have so far observed that I know. . . I am certain that I am a conscious being.” 15
Thus, Descartes argued that his own existence as a conscious being is necessarily beyond doubt. From this beginning Descartes attempted to derive a knowledge about knowledge, God, and the world. Our concern here, however, is only with his theory of self. Let us turn to three major corollaries about the self which Descartes felt was established by the above line of reasoning.
(i) I am a thing that thinks, an “intelligent substance” that can exist “as a whole” being, independently of any of the various faculties of thinking or consciousness (e.g., imagination, perception, etc.) which I find in me.
(ii) I am “one and the same mind that wills, feels. . . understands,” etc.16 That is, I am the same person, the same “conscious being” throughout all of my activities and experiences, “a single and complete thing,” “non-extended, without parts, and “wholly indivisible.” 17
(iii) I am non-picturable and non-imaginable, and “nothing I can comprehend by the help of imagination belongs to my conception of myself.” One’s nature as a conscious self, Descartes argued, is radically different and logically distinct from all the contents of perception and imagination, 18and
“The mind’s attention must be carefully diverted from these things, so that she may discern her own nature as distinctly as possible.” 19
These conclusions about the self have proven very troublesome. From Descartes’ time onwards philosophers have questioned them, asking:
(i) What reason do we have to infer the existence of some conscious thing or substance existing above and beyond the various contents of consciousness displayed by introspection?
(ii) What is meant by the “sameness” of self existing throughout its various activities, and what evidence (other than ordinary common-sense intuition) do we have that there is one selfsame thing that persists?
(iii) What concept can we have of something absolutely unimaginable and unpicturable?
These three questions, about the self as a conscious thing, the same conscious thing, and unimaginable conscious thing, have dominated discussions of self for over three hundred years. Descartes’ meditations on the self, however plausible they might at first seem, have raised more questions than they settled, and his Archimedes” point is not yet at all secure and immovable.
We will later see if the transcendent theory we will be discussing provides us with a useful perspective for re-evaluating these difficult questions about the nature of the self. Rather than attempting to apply this transcendent knowledge here, however, let us continue our examination of modern philosophical theories and problems of self as they developed after Descartes.
1. 3. Psychologising the Self
The substantialisation of the self was accepted not only by Cartesians, but also by some philosophers who objected to his philosophical system (e.g. Berkeley). Only Hume who pushed empiricism to its extreme, rejected the nature of the self as a substance. Due to his empiricist principles, he ultimately described the self as a merely psychological “I”. It does not mean that by such a position, he refused to consider the knowledge of the self; rather, like Descartes, he regarded knowledge of the self to be of supreme importance. In the introduction to his Treatise on Human Nature he declared:
“Here then is the only expedient, from which we can hope for success in our philosophical researches, to. . . march directly to the capital or centre of these [i.e., all the] sciences, to human nature itself, which being masters of we may every where else hope for an easy victory.”20
It is obvious that Hume was concerned with developing philosophical knowledge that was scientific. He subtitled his Treatise “An attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects,” that is, into subjects dealing with mind, knowledge, and human nature. By an “experimental method of reasoning,” he meant reasoning that was experiential in orientation. All concepts that could not be derived from experience, that is from our “impressions” (or perceptions) and the relations observed to hold among them, were to be discarded as unscientific. Only those concepts the meanings of which could be fully explicated in terms of experience were to be accepted as significant and useful for gaining knowledge.21 Let us now see how Hume applied his “experimental method” of analysis to the self.
Hume, responding to Descartes’ analysis, 22 noted that it is supposed certain that the self has a “perfect identity and simplicity,” is “invariably the same through the whole course of our lives,” and is neither an impression nor perception but rather “that to which our several impressions and ideas are supposed to relate.” 23 According to Hume, however, this notion of self, which at first seems to appear commonsensical, is not supported by the facts of our actual experience. For we have no impression that is constant and invariable, 24 and no experience of self (or anything else) as distinct from perceptions or impressions. 25Therefore, Hume argued, we have no experiential basis for any concept of self as single, simple, or continuing. This commonsensical concept of self that is supposed, therefore, according to Hume, is simply “fictitious.” 26
Thus, on the basis of Hume’s analysis, if we remain true to our experience we are forced to acknowledge that the self in reality “is nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions which. . . are in perpetual flux or movement.” 27 For introspection only displays collections of such perceptions, and no perception or collection is perceived as constant. This observation, and its apparent conflict with our sense of self as constant and abiding naturally prompted Hume to ask:
“What then gives so great a propension to ascribe an identity to these successive perceptions [constituting one’s self], and to suppose ourselves possess of an invariable and uninterrupted existence through the whole of our lives?” 28
Hume’s answer is that our various perceptions are so closely connected by two relations, “contiguity” (being “next to”) and “resemblance,” that our attention naturally passes among them so smoothly that we generally do not notice their separateness and distinctness, and that as a result we simply take them unreflectingly to be aspects of a single thing, namely, one’s self-identical mind or self. Self-identity is only a (naturally occurring) fiction. 29
“Hume at first considered this “relational” account of the genesis of our concept of the self “perfectly decisive.”30
He asserted:
“When I turn my reflection on myself, I never can perceive this self without some one or more perceptions. It is the composition of these, therefore, which forms the self.” 31
“We have no notion of it distinct from particular perceptions.” 32
“And we have no impression of self or substance as something simple and individual. We have, therefore, no idea of them in this sense.” 33
Thus, Hume reasserted, there can be no sense to the idea of a single, abiding self to which our various individual perceptions and thoughts are related or connected.
“So far I seem to be attended with sufficient evidence. But having thus loosened all our particular perceptions, when I proceed to explain the principle of connection, which binds them together and makes us attribute to them a real simplicity and identity; I am sensible, that my account is very defective.” 34
That is, Hume’s earlier attempt to unify the “loosened perceptions” and account for the “felt” unity of self by means of relations observed to hold between them is now explicitly rejected as “very defective.” 35
The logic of Hume’s difficulty may perhaps require some explanation. Hume argued that each of our “perceptions” or “impressions” (that is, each component of our inner and outer experience) is a logically “distinct existence.” Each experience can be had independently of any and all of the others, in logic if not in actual fact. That is, there is nothing in any of our perceptions which necessarily connects it with any other. By recognising this we have, in Hume’s terms, (conceptually) “loosened” each of our perceptions from all the others. Thus if we reflect on the set of perceptions that comprise the experiences of our own lives we see that there is nothing within these “loosened” perceptions that can account for their connectedness. This means that there is nothing in them that can account for the fact that each of us “feels” that they are connected by being “bound together” as one’s own.
Hume’s argument here, of course, is only about perceptions as perceptions. Taken by itself, it does not imply anything about what we naturally take to be objects of and causal processes underlying the perceptions themselves. For example, the fact that the contents of the left and right portions of one’s visual (or auditory) field exist and are related in the way that they presently are (as left and right, being experienced now by oneself) presumably is the result of a long causal sequence of events. Given that objective causal sequence, what is experienced on the left must be experienced there. But on the basis of Hume’s analysis, 36 if we consider the perceptions just as perceptions, we can readily imagine, for example, seeing the left portion somewhere else, in a different context, or even entirely by itself. For each portion is “distinguishable, and separable, and may be conceived as separately existent, and may exist separately, without any contradiction or absurdity.” 37
One might have dreamed of having perceptions that are connected, or disconnected, in the ways that are different from the ways that they actually are. But recognising that (considered purely as perceptions) there is nothing in them that requires them to be connected in the ways that they are, or even to be connected at all, makes it apparent that there is nothing in them which can account for the fact that they are connected together as one’s own. Hume accordingly felt constrained to conclude that
“All my hopes vanish, when I come to explain the principles, that unite our successive perceptions in our thought or consciousness. I cannot discover any theory, which gives me satisfaction on this head.” 38
Hume’s introspective analysis and conclusion that he could find neither any constant perception nor anything distinct from perceptions, and therefore nothing which could correspond to the notion of a single, abiding self, has proven very influential since his time. His analyses of the varieties of perceptions and their relations and his attempt to construct a theory of self in terms of relations and collections of perceptions accordingly have prompted philosophers and psychologists alike to offer a variety of theories of the self as a bundle, collection or other association of perceptions related in various ways (such as continuity, similarity, or memory-connectedness). Hume himself, however, not only rejected his own collection theory of self, but also apparently felt that no such theory could succeed. For his rejection, as we saw, was formulated entirely in general terms, without even mentioning any of the specifics of his own earlier theory.
Hume’s rejection of bundle or collection theories of self was based on his observation that our perceptions, considered purely as perceptions, are separable and re-combinable. This observation also provides the basis for an explicit general argument against the possibility of any adequate “collection” or “relational” theory of self. The idea behind the argument seems to be simple. When we recognise, as Hume did, that any imaginable perception could, logically, be had independently of its relationships to other perceptions, it becomes apparent that any such perception (logically, if not in fact) could be had by anyone, including oneself. Perhaps the world would have to be very different (as in a dream, or in some science fiction narrative) for one to actually have a certain fanciful experience, but if one can imagine anyone’s having it, one can imagine (without logical contradiction) having it oneself. To this extent, then, it appears that we naturally conceive of ourselves as experiencers somehow independent of the restrictions imposed by particular experiences and their relationships. It seems obvious that neither collections of such experiences nor their relations can be expected to capture this independent aspect of our ordinary concept of self.
The full general argument, intended to cover all possible cases, is naturally highly abstract. 39 Its basic idea, however, is simply that when a relation R between perceptions is defined, it will be incapable of grasping the nature of one’s self. 40 This is because in attempting to specify the collection of perceptions that supposedly constitute one’s self, the relation will always imply that it is (logically) impossible for one to have perceptions that he (logically) could have. The following examples serve to make the significance of this general argument clear.
Suppose, as a variation of Hume’s original “contiguity” and “resemblance” theory, that for any thing to be a perception it must be experienced as associated with our own body, and in a place connected with those of our prior experiences. If the relation R is defined in this way, then any perception that is not experienced as (a) associated with our body and (b) in a place connected with those of our earlier experiences will be a perception that R excludes. This means that it is a perception which we cannot have. It is easy to see, however, that people not only can but actually do have such excluded perceptions. If our body is moved to a completely unfamiliar place while we are unconscious, our perceptions of surroundings upon waking will not be connected with those of our prior experiences. Furthermore it is obviously possible to have experiences where our body is not noticed at all, and in dreams we can not only not notice our body but even have experiences which are associated to all appearances with a different body, or even with no body at all. These are all common kinds of experiences. Yet the relation R defined above implies that we could not have any of them. Thus each of them shows that the relation being evaluated is incapable of defining the collection of perceptions that we can have.
The relation evaluated and rejected above was defined in the spirit of Hume’s original suggestion, in terms of the relationships between our perceptions. But the general argument against collection theories implies that relations which are expanded to refer to physical objects (such as our own bodies) as well will still always have counter examples. For example, it is often held that an experience must be had by means of (or at least in association with) our body, whether or not we notice this fact. Thus the relation R could require our body as a condition for a perception. Thus, any experience felt before our body existed or after it ceases to exist, cannot be an experience possibly had by ourselves. Now consider some logically possible experiences occurring after our body ceases to exist. Then the relation R now being examined implies that one cannot have this experience. While it may well be true in fact that we cannot have any experiences after our bodies cease to exist, the majority of the people in the world not only appear capable of imagining that they have such experiences, butane often even very concerned about having and/or not having them, as the history of the world’s religions (not to mention the texts of Plato and other philosophers) shows. Since this concern, held so deeply by so many ordinary people, is about their having such experiences themselves, it is clear that this relation R is incapable of capturing, and indeed is contradicted by, our ordinary concept of self as it is reflected in these widespread religious fears and aspirations. 41
The relations used in the above examples could of course be refined and revised to accommodate any given counter-examples. The general argument, however, implies that every empirically significant relation will have such counter-examples. It rejects all such relations at once, and implies that whatever relations may hold between our various perceptions, these relations are unable either to define the self by specifying the collection of perceptions proper to it, or to express what is involved in our perceptions being, for each of us, our own. Thus they cannot serve as the “principle of connection” uniting perceptions into a collection adequate to defining the self. Hume’s scepticism about the possibility of developing a bundle or collection-theory of the self was thus well-founded.
“Did our perceptions either inhere in something simple and individual, or did the mind perceive some real connection among them, there would be no difficulty in the case. For my part, I must plead the privilege of a sceptic, and confess that this difficulty is too hard for my understanding.” 42
The “capital or centre” of knowledge clearly has not yet been captured.
1. 4. Transcendentalising the Self
Descartes’ and Hume’s theories posited a third possibility in the history of modern thought: transcendentalisation of the self. This possibility is firstly examined by Kant and followed by the majority of philosophers in post-Kantian period. Here we summarise two outstanding figures in this line: Kant and Husserl whose positions on transcendentalisation seem to arise differently from a tension between Cartesian and Humean trends.
a) Kant: Hume’s critical analyses had a profound impact on Kant. Reading Hume, Kant wrote, woke him from his “dogmatic slumber”43 and caused him to re-evaluate the foundations of what he had formerly taken to be knowledge. Hume’s analyses convinced Kant that the relationships we observe in experience are always contingent, and that experience therefore cannot display necessary, universal truth. 44 This forced Kant to question his earlier dogmatic convictions radically, and ask how, and even whether, knowledge which is certain and universal could even be possible. In his Critique of Pure Reason he responded that we can in fact have knowledge which is certain and universal, and that universal certainty is a reflection of the invariant aspects of the nature of the knower, rather than of the changing contents of whatever one may know or experience. 45
Kant offered an analysis of the self as “the original synthetic unity” of all knowledge and experience, a unity which serves as “the Supreme Principle of all Employment of the Understanding.” 46 Kant’s analyses of these concepts are detailed and quite sophisticated, but a few basic observations can usefully be made here. Kant noted that our experience is always in space and/or time, and, furthermore, it is always of extensions in space and/or time, never of isolated points. 47 Any isolated point, having no extension, would be too (infinitely) small ever to be perceived). Every experience, then, is composed of a synthesis of parts, and all the parts must be experienced by a single experiencer. 48 Otherwise they would not be parts of an experience, and the original experience would simply not exist. In order for the letter “I” at the beginning of this sentence to be seen, various parts must be seen together in specific relations. If each different part was seen in isolation by a different person, the letter would be seen by no one. Thus the very existence of seeing the letter implies that various parts are seen together (synthesised) by a single experiencer. Similarly, for any thought to be thought, its parts, too, must be synthesised in the experience of a single thinker. 49 Thus, Kant concluded, for any thought or experience to exist, its parts must already have been synthesised and presented to a single conscious self. The individual self according to Kant thus represents “the original synthetic unity” underlying all thought and experience, and, as underlying all thought and experience, its unity is the “supreme principle of all employment of the understanding.” In Kant’s terminology the “identity of the self,” 50 the unity of “transcendental apperception” or “pure original unchanging consciousness,” 51 is thus the universal condition presupposed by all experience and thought. Being presupposed by experience it is not given by it; it represents the supreme unifying contribution of the self. Furthermore, Kant argues, since our analysis has shown that this must be true of all experience, independent of all particulars of content, we know it with a priori certainty, that is, with a certainty which is logically prior to and independent of all the changing contents of experience.
Kant thus appears here to have located a fundamental truth about the self and its relation to experience, namely that the self must be a unitary, synthesising referent for all of one’s experiences.
“It must be possible for the “I think” to accompany all my representations; for otherwise something would be represented in me which could not be thought at all, and that is equivalent to saying that the representation would be impossible, or at least nothing to me.” 52
But, Kant adds, there is an important way in which even this knowledge gives no knowledge about the self itself, for
“The perception of self. . . this inner perception is nothing more than the mere apperception “I think”. . . in which no special distinction or empirical determination is given.” 53
Our concept of the self thus appears to be “empty,” for we seem to know nothing about the self other than that it plays the role of the conscious synthesising or unifying pole of our experiences. As Kant puts it:
“The simple, and in itself completely empty, representation “I”. . . we cannot even say that this is a concept, but only that it is a bare consciousness which accompanies all concepts. Through this I or he or it (the thing) which thinks, nothing further is represented than a transcendental subject of the thought = X. It is known only through the thoughts which are its predicates, and of it, apart from them, we cannot have any concept whatsoever.”54
Kant’s conception of self thus raises two important, related questions:
(a) Why according to Kant, must the “I” be a completely empty representation? And
(b) why is it that the self cannot be known as it is in itself?
We can readily extract answers to these two questions from within Kant’s system. The answer to the first question emphasises the relation of the self to experience, and the second emphasises the nature of the self in itself. I say “extract” two answers because while Kant’s conclusions are clear, his reasoning here seems to be not spelled out. 55 We can nevertheless fairly see how his conclusions follow from his general position.
(a) First let us see why Kant would hold that the “I” is in itself simple and empty, and that it is obvious that in attaching “I” to our thoughts we designate the subject of inherence transcendentally, without noticing in it any quality whatsoever. 56
Kant’s point is not that we simply do not notice any quality, but that there is no quality to be noticed. Whether or not this is “obvious,” it can readily be shown to follow within Kant’s system: My having an experience implies that it is my experience that is already subject, in Kant’s terminology, to the “transcendental unity of apperception.” Therefore if we add “I” it doesn’t mean that we add what was not there already. Since this is true for every possible experience, there is no quality the “I” can ever add to any experience; therefore it has no quality of its own to add, that is, “no special distinction or empirical determination” which can serve to distinguish it within the field of experience. We thus see how Kant could reasonably maintain that the universal applicability of the “I” (of “I think,” “I experience,” “I am,” etc.) precludes it from having “any admixture of experience,”57 from being characterised by any “empirical data”58 or “special designation,” 59 and from being “accompanied by any further representation.”60
(b) Now let us see what the representation of “I”, empty as it may be, is supposed to be of (namely the self which combines or synthesises experiences and thoughts into its own unified whole). In the first place, it is clear that Kant thought of the self as (somehow) outside the whole field of experience. For insofar as the self is that which combines or synthesises experiences, it must lie outside of them, for “combination does not lie in objects [that are combined], and cannot be borrowed from them.”61
The self as the unity of apperception is thus, in Kant’s terminology, “transcendental,” ever associated with, yet never to be found in, the field of appearances. Furthermore, Kant’s analysis of experience and the unifying activity of the self leads necessarily, according to his arguments, to the concept of the self as a self-identical thing-in-itself independent of space and time — in Kant’s terminology a “noumenon.” For the self, using space and time as its matrices to integrate all of its experiences, must somehow be independent of these matrices it uses (as well as of objects it integrates). 62 But, Kant argued, if the self (as noumenon) must be outside of time, there can be absolutely no possibility of experiencing the self as it is in itself, for it is a given (although unexplainable) fact of human nature that absolutely all of our experience is of appearances in space and/or time. 63
In short, for Kant (a) the “I” (of “I think,” “I am conscious,” etc.) is an empirically empty concept precisely because it is necessarily compatible with and presupposed by every possible experience, and (b) we can have no knowledge of the self (the “I”) as it is in itself, because it is (necessarily thought of as) outside of appearances in space and time, and our experience, the basis of knowledge of particular things, is always and only of appearances in the field of time.
This, for Kant, results in a highly unsatisfactory situation:
(i) reasoning about thought and experience leads to the conclusion that a simple, self identical, absolutely unconditioned64 self, a thing-in-itself beyond the field of appearances, must be presupposed, yet
(ii) reasoning about this concept shows that it is vacuous and gives us no factual knowledge, for it has no empirical content, and there is no possibility of experiencing any object corresponding to it. While logical coherence requires thinking of the self as the simple, self-identical subject 65 of our experiences, “such a way of speaking has no sort of application to real objects, and therefore cannot in the least extend our knowledge.” 66
And in particular it yields “nothing whatsoever towards the knowledge of myself as an object.” 67 We thus are here involved in what Kant calls a “transcendental illusion,” an “inevitable illusion. . . [springing] from the very nature of reason.” 68
“I think myself on behalf of a possible experience, at the same time abstracting from all actual experience; and I conclude there from that I can be conscious of my existence even apart from experience and its empirical conditions.” 69
But this is an error, for
“In so doing I am confusing the possible abstraction from my empirically determined existence with the supposed consciousness of a possible separate existence of my thinking self,” 70
And inner awareness can “furnish nothing to the object of pure consciousness for the knowledge of its separate existence. 71
This dilemma, according to Kant, is inescapable:
“Even the wisest of men cannot free himself from [this] illusion which unceasingly mocks and torments him.” 72
The unity of the self, the “supreme principle of all employment of understanding,” thus, according to Kant, inevitably involves us in illusion.
b) Husserl: Descartes discovered the self as the un-doubtable subject of all thinking. He clearly saw that the self is not a person but only that which did the thinking which he then called a res cogitans. Hume denied that there was any such self to be discovered through experience or reason; but he could not avoid referring to himself while writing to explain this theory. Kant tried to reply to both Hume and Descartes. He suggested a “self” which is non-empirical but which captures the insight of the Cogito, a transcendental self.73 Husserl once again tries to introduce a transcendental self, a non-psychological “I”. He says that Descartes falls into an inconsistency in regard to establishing his own ego as transcendental.74 The transcendental which is as a pre-condition for the object of enquiry to exist (perception in this case), Husserl thinks, is what escapes from the field of consciousness:
“As a natural man, can I ask seriously and transcendentally how I get outside of my island of consciousness.” 75
The answer to this question, according to him, is positive:
“By the method of transcendental reduction each of us, as Cartesian meditator, was led back to his transcendental ego.” 76
“If I put myself above all this life and refrain from doing any believing . . . I thereby acquire myself as the pure ego.” 77
This is indeed so because:
“The transcendental ego emerged by virtue of my paranthesing of the entire Objective world and all other (including all ideal) Objectivities. In consequence of this parenthesising, I have become aware of myself as the transcendental ego.” 78
and finally:
“In such [self-] experience the ego is accessible to himself originally. But at any particular time this experience offers only a core that is experienced with strict adequacy, namely the ego’s living present.” 79
Since Husserl insists that phenomenology should be restricted to pure description, we can easily see why the notion of a transcendental self puts him in trouble. This is because the transcendental self who is the subject of all experiences cannot be the object of any possible experience; if so, then there is nothing which can be described.
In his early works, 80 thanks to his faithfulness to the idea of pure description, Husserl rejects the notion of the pure or transcendental self. In this stage he, following Hume, identifies consciousness simply as a bundle of acts, and there is no need for a “referential centre”. Later, in Ideas, he speaks of Cogito in a somewhat Cartesian manner and regards it as “necessary”. Applying the epoche, the method of withdrawing, the Cogito remains unbracketable, and he says that this Cogito is the self. In this stage Husserl still maintains that we can not describe the self. With Descartes, Husserl argues that the self remains after any doubting or reduction and that it is the pure ego which performs the acts of constitution which yield the world.
“The experiencing ego is still nothing that might be taken for itself and made into an object of inquiry on its own account. Apart from its “way of being related “or ways of behaving”, it is completely empty of essential components, it has no content that could be unravelled. It is in and for itself indescribable.” 81
Later, 82 Husserl ignores the notion of the self in the form of “Ego” and describes it as “soul” which is passive for the most part. The self here is described as a functional centre, and as a polarity to which intuition happens. Thus understood, Husserl says, the self constitutes itself. The idea that the self is a mostly passive centre which constitutes itself, puts Husserl’s thesis in line with Kant’s thesis of Cogito. This self is not a substance, and indescribable apart from its necessary role in perception. It is as necessary for the existence of (its) objects as its objects are necessary for it. In formulating the self here, Husserl seems to follow Kant in his “refutation of idealism” in the first Critique. 83 The self and its objects are polarities, each necessary for the other. The self is active so far as it provides the forms of intuition and categories of understanding within which objects can be known. The self, however, is passive so far as intuition is concerned and can not be said to create its objects.
In his later works, Husserl, relying on Descartes, seems to regard the self as an Archemidian point. He speaks of the self as “absolute,” meaning that all objects exist only by relation to it but not vice versa. He introduces the transcendental reduction which reduces all objects of intuition to products of this self. Ultimately, Husserl describes this self as a “monad,” an absolute ego, a total self which “includes also the whole of actual and potential conscious life.” 84 It is for this monad that all things exist:
“Objects exist for me, and are for me what they are, only as objects of actual and possible consciousness.” 85
This ultimate result, of course, leads Husserl to a kind of solipsism86 and idealism87 — as accepted by him in Cartesian Meditations:
“Phenomenology is eo ipso “transcendental idealism”.”88
“Without doubt . . . [phenomenology] condemns us to a solipsism.” 89
Husserl’s theory of self also leads to a radical subjectivism, instead of a transcendental empiricism.90 What Husserl builds in his later works is a castle for the transcendental subjectivity to which all true knowledge belongs. 91 The idea of an absolute self, a monad, also threatens Husserl with scepticism, for the idea that everything is relative to the self and all knowledge is knowledge of the transcendental subjectivity entails this consequence that we can not know anything except our own subjectivity.
1.5. Final Considerations
The analyses of Descartes, Hume, Kant and Husserl have raised serious problems for our ordinary notion of self. Descartes, reflecting common sense, argued that the self is single, simple, abiding, and different from its varying perceptions. Hume rejected this characterisation on the grounds that we have no corresponding experience. Yet he concluded that this rejection, along with the consequent attempt to account for our concept of self by means of collections of perceptions, leads to a “labyrinth” of inconsistencies. 92 Kant, on the other hand, argued that we necessarily have to think of the self as single, simple and abiding, but he also argued that the fact that we have no corresponding experience necessarily renders this concept problematic. The result is a concept of self which, as vacuous, “unceasingly mocks and torments” even “the wisest of men.”
To make our difficulty even worse, the above discussion of Kant led to the conclusion that the self, the “I” that we necessarily think of as present throughout all of our experiences, cannot properly be characterised by any empirical quality. And the above discussion of Hume led to the related conclusion that the self cannot be properly characterised even by collections of or relations between our perceptions. It thus appears that it is not possible to characterise the self in terms of empirical qualities, their collections, or their relations. Our analysis so far thus seems to imply that our concept of self is, as Hume suggested and Kant insisted, meaningless.
Husserl seems to remain in a continuous tension between Humean and Kantian demands, from one side, and Cartesian demand from the other side, and ultimately ends up in a radical subjectivism.
It could be said, on the basis of the above discussion, that it is the ontological gap in the epistemology of the self in modern thought that raises the lack of any experience corresponding to our ordinary concept of self as single, simple, and abiding. This lack appears to make it impossible to develop any philosophically satisfactory notion of self. But if epistemology of the self is the “Archimedes’ point,” the “capital or centre” of all knowledge, and the “supreme principle of all employment of the understanding”, as Descartes, Husserl, Hume, and Kant respectively indicate, then the absence of a satisfactory ontology of self points to a profound gap at the basis of modern thought. That is to say, the “being” of the self is repeatedly ignored from Cartesian meditations to Husserlian meditations. This is what we mean by the “ontetic gap”.
Now, if there is such a gap in the basis of modern theories of the self, how could we fill it? There are, of course, a few suggestions offered by Western critics to fill this gap — either by appealing to the far eastern schools, as we see in early Geunon93 who detected a moral self in Hinduism, or by reconsidering traditional Western philosophy, as we see in existentialism. (We will consider existentialism as an example of such efforts throughout this research).
Though all these efforts to fill the gap are praiseworthy, we will however present a new perspective, originally drawn from an old tradition in Persian philosophy: the transcendent tradition. As we depicted the problematic of the modern notion of the self as an ontetic gap, we would argue for returning to the “being” of the self to bridge this gap. 94 To remove the ontetic gap, one should consider the self’s ontology: Instead of reflectively and epistemologically theorising about the nature of the self as a concept, we need a living, performative, factual and existential notion to indicate the experience of the self. Such a notion is exactly what will be suggested in this research.
We would suggest that the transcendent theory can bridge the ontetic gap in the epistemology of the self because it assigns to the self a special kind of “being” that remains apart from (and prior to) any distinction between ontology and epistemology, and so, as we will see, automatically removes the modern subjectivistic self.
CHAPTER TWO
The Transcendent Method: A Reconstruction
In the previous chapter I suggested that the problematic of the modern subjectivistic self is rooted in an ontetic gap, and one may remove the subjectivistic self by reconsidering the self as it is ontetic. However this ontologising approach needs a method, and to this end, I will try in this chapter to reconstruct the outline of a method tacitly employed by Sadr al-Din Muhammad Shirazi (hereafter: Sadra)1 in his doctrine of the illuminative existentialism. Historically speaking, this idea is rooted in Avicenna’s idea of Hekmat al-Mashreqhyyin; 2 Avicenna hinted that he desires to establish a philosophy that was purely orientalized/illuminative in principle. His commentators understand this to be a hint towards a philosophy drawn from ancient Persian wisdom. Because of his death, he could not elaborate such a philosophy. This task was only later fulfilled by another Persian philosopher, Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi3, who established a new philosophical system on the notions of Illumination (ishraagh) and Light (nour) 4.
Thus rooted, Sadra’s transcendent philosophy — a name picked up from Daavoud Ghaysari, the great commentator of Ibn ‘Arabian contemplative mysticism, and used as part of the title of Sadra’s major work, Transcendent philosophy through the Four Intellectual Journeys of the Self5 — followed the doctrine of sayr wa sulook, which is widely developed within the transcendent mystical literature, to put together the elements of transcendent philosophy through “four journeys of the self”. The phrase “four journeys of the self” that is brought in the title of his book is symbolically employed here, to depict an intellectual process whereby the self gains true knowledge following its existential transformation. Interpreting this symbolism, we would try here to “extract”7 a descriptive illustration of the transcendent method that is often hidden from the eyes of investigators and orientalists. The chief aim of this reconstruction is to present, through a comparative description of the transcendent method, the transcendent notion of reduction that is crucial for our discussion of the ontetic structure of the self, because it is through this reduction that transcendent philosophy brings the ontology and epistemology of the self together, and this is what we need to bridge the gap at the basis of modern notions of the self. This will concern us in detail — though it is not, of course, our intention here to study all doctrinal applications of this method or to evaluate its various aspects.
2.1 Primary Considerations
Transcendent philosophy has different philosophical, theological and mystical aims. As for these aims the transcendent school has chosen a synthetic method. For this school, philosophy, as an investigation and interpretation of every kind of phenomena, natural, inward-human, and metaphysical, seeks the profound foundations of these phenomena. Therefore, as can be inferred from the transcendent tradition as a whole, philosophy should conduct its search by having at its disposal all methods of obtaining knowledge. Philosophical activity implies the presence of a problem or a variety of problems in need of a solution; and since a method is “a device or a procedure, to solve a problem or answer a question”8, and since problems or questions vary in kind, the methods for solving them will also vary.
The multiplicity of problems confronting man’s intellect demands the use of a multiplicity of methods. To have such an idea of method implies that man must have been greatly impressed by the empirical scientific approach; this is why he commences his philosophic investigation by it and continued its application until the disclosure of the Being is achieved. This, however, does not force him into a slavish adherence to the scientific approach, nor to give up the results derived from other methods.
The free manner in which transcendent philosophy utilizes these methods compels us to believe that this school does not believe that philosophy has only one distinct method of its own. On this point transcendent philosophy completely agrees with Marvin Farber who writes in this respect:
“[The plurality of methods] signifies that no one type of procedure is to be regarded as the correct method exclusively…. An unlimited number of methods restricted at a given time only by human ingenuity and the extent of knowledge, is the response to an unlimited number of types of problem. The principle of the co-operation of methods applies, whether the methods be objectivistic or subjectivistic, “longitudinal” [historical or evolutionary] or “cross-sectional” [conceptual and formal].”9
This is the transcendent point of view as well, especially when the word “historical” is replaced by “existential”.
Let us now read this in the context of the transcendent terminology. The literature of the transcendent school, which covers its meditative as well as the speculative aspects, is full of dissertations and letters discussing the methods for achieving the truth. The general title used for such a methodological discussions is called sayr wa sulook. There are two interrelated kinds of sayr wa sulook in general: Afaqi which belongs to the horizon of Being, and Anfusi which is vertically directed toward the purest point (or the source) of Being. These two kinds of sayr wa sulook are realised for a Truth-seeker (talib al haqq) in four stages of an existential experience which indicates four ek-stasis of the self to achieve the presential cognition.10 Generally considering, however, we may summaries their wide discussions on these stages by philosophically depicting them in the following form:
Each stage implies a reduction:
(a) Reduction from appearances (dawaher) to their essences (mahyyat);
(b) Reduction from essences to the knowing self (nafs al ‘aref);
(c) Reduction from the knowing self to the self as presential cognition (al nafs ‘ayn o ma’refateh);
(d) Reduction of the presential cognition to Being which implies a new return to the things (the phenomenal world) through Being itself, with a different outlook; considering neither their appearance (as phenomenalism says) nor their essence (as phenomenology says); rather, their reality as the emanative entities.
The reductions (a) and (b) belong, in their terminology, to the horizontal lines in the structure of Being, and we can classify them as the eidtic reduction (in Husserlian sense) because they belong to essences and the eidetic field. The reductions (c) and (d), on the other hand, belong to the vertical line in the structure of Being and we can classify them as the ontetic11 reduction because they are concerned only with pure being. This eidetic-ontetic distinction is based on Sadra’s special understanding of the essence-existence distinction, which we will discuss later. In the eidetic reduction, in which we are reflectively seeking the essences and their interrelations as they appear in our reflective constituting consciousness, the transcendent school employs a plurality of methods: induction, deduction and other logical methods. In the ontetic reduction, in which there is no reflection but a pure presence in the mythical symphony of Being, it employs methods of ontetic “touch” and contact.
Transcendent philosophy, methodologically speaking, intends to bestow objectivity, inevitability, freedom from presuppositions, and a radical beginning for its philosophy. By such a method, and so far as the transcendent epistemology of presence is concerned, the transcendent school suggests a radical beginning in which the Truth-seeker (talib al haqq) returns to freshly know himself, God, the world, and the whole system of Being. Such a starting implies a passing from appearances or phenomena (dawaher) to their real truth. However, their real truth is still conceptually constituted as essences within our mind. This is because we still remain on the horizontal line of Being, that is, in the eidetic field in which we reflectively journey (al sayr al afaqi). Though this is one dimension of Being constituted as essences for us, one cannot claim that he reached the reality in this level, by merely reducing the appearances to their essences. This is because their realities, Sadra argues, are equal their being and existence, and not their essence. and this is crucial for him to reduce essence to existence as we will see later. But on the vertical lines of Being, that is, in the ontetic field, we are non-reflectively absorbed, and existentially experience ourselves, beings and God as a single Being. This brief description of the transcendent method suggests a triple discussion. We start with the ideal of a radical beginning, and then continue with the eidetic reduction in which the logical and reflective rules and methods are employed, and end with the ontetic reduction by which the existential aspects of the Sadraean discussion are revealed. On this, then, we would now describe the transcendent idea of a radical beginning.
2.2 The Radical Beginning
As hinted above, the transcendent method starts with an ideal for a beginningless commence. This can easily be seen in its emphasis on tawbah, meaning return as suggested by the transcendent doctrine, of tahzib al nafs, the purification of the self. This means for them to be released from what is done as yet; and to start again with a hope to achieve the truth. To this Sadra points when writing: “Oh, my friend! Begin [to philosophise]… first of all by purifying your self.” 12
Transcendent philosophy suggests that in order to grasp the truth and to identify with being, the Truth-seeker (talib al haqq) should practically purify himself from what has occupied him through his personal, environmental and social history. 13 The mystical aspect of the transcendent epistemology is hidden in this point, because there are systematic rules and norms that should be practiced in order to achieve ultimate truth and identify with Being. The first step is to give up all educated and learned issues, to purify from what occupied the self, to abandon the past and the future and to pick up the present moment. We would be, in this mystical outlook, alone in our existence, in order to have a new look. Unmolded by human conventions or by the social values, manners and philosophical systems of history, we must be free of all the prejudices, misconceptions, and assumptions characteristic of socially-bred humans. This means that one must disembody the human personality from the entire cultural, social, and political complex of traditional society. The transcendent school advices us to start from the fundamentals.
For Sadra, this doctrine philosophically indicates a radical beginning and a non-presupposed commencement. This is so because this doctrine has direct bearing on the method of philosophising, the beginning of a fresh outlook on philosophical problems, and the explanation of man’s encounter with his environment.
Nobody can grasp it [the truth] except those who have been alone, isolated from the others, variously mediating, and absolutely withdrawn from their ordinary culture, social customs, habits and worldly behaviours and concerns, fully suspending traditional beliefs and the common morality. 14
Sadra advises us to avoid taking “traditionally accepted thoughts, because…such a taking is imitation and formal, keeping the way to the truth closed up.” 15
By arguing for such a separation from man’s social situation, Sadra has done what Descartes, Hume and Husserl intended to do. Resemblance to these thinkers should not be overstretched; for to excessively render transcendent philosophy in modern garb more leads to a methodological blunder. When done within legitimate limits, however, a comparison between this school and certain modern schools would show that what some consider to be the revolutionary attempts of the later schools are not entirely new, and that previous masters were aware of the importance of such attempts, though in less detail.
The transcendent school attempts to raise sense of doubt (maqam al hayrah) that is just prior or along with “return” (tawbah). This doubt (hayrah) can be used to complete the ideal of beginningless. For this school doubt implies a hypothetical destruction of the surrounding world of tradition and early education. This shattering “the mould” captures the very fabric of the self at the moment of birth and fashions it according to the patterns of the past and the present. In this, the transcendent school was trying to give a fresh and radical beginning to its philosophy. We use the word “radical” in a Husserlian sense, as a radical emancipation from all presuppositions. This means beginning with the ambitious task of knowing things without any a priori adoption of epistemological, metaphysical, ontological, or value principles.
Man, the truth-seeker (talib al haqq), is exists with no instruments except the givenness of his primeval impulses and his curious mind heading for truth. By allowing his existential capacities to unfold, excluding any intervention from without, and by exploring the freshness of a puzzling world filled with puzzling phenomena, the transcendent school is proclaiming to philosophers the Husserlian maxim before Husserl: “back to the things themselves,” means to see, perceive, observe and describe phenomena afresh. For transcendent philosophy, this maxim means a return to their beings and not, as Husserl meant, a return to their essences. It urges man to overthrow the artificial and sophisticated barrier of schemes and values between man and the “life world” developed by humanity throughout the ages. The “things in themselves” are “beings” with which we are in touch. In this sense, everybody is a radical and naive empiricist at the beginning of their life. In his everyday life, he is in touch with the environing world as it appeared to him, or as he encountered it in immediate experience. This is the Husserlian world, the “life world,” the ordinary world in which one lives, works, and plays. Like phenomenology, the transcendent school judges things on their own terms, as they are experienced. From the beginning of consciousness of facts until cognisance of Being, the transcendent method is partly descriptive and phenomenological. It advises us to experience before theorizing.
The transcendent school suspends all preconceived commitments and holds the entire world of conventions and traditions in abeyance. This school’s ideal of freedom from presuppositions is like Descartes’, Hume’s, and Husserl’s. For the transcendent school as for these thinkers, this ideal is a preparatory stage to examine all beliefs and noetic processes for evidence, validity, and consequences. The examination of these is accomplished by breaking away from them and, thus, dislodging them temporarily in order to find out whether philosophy in its fresh start from “things” in experience to reach certain truth, confirms or disconfirms these beliefs. Moreover, through this radical method, this school pushes its search and enquiry to its extreme consequences. Sadra, for example,16 depicts our “blank” and receptive mind as constituting and perfecting itself, and struggling to obtain far-reaching conclusions entirely on its own. Our progressive ascension, Sadra holds, has a tint of inevitability and necessity. Seemingly without any preconceived notions we achieve cognisance of causality, God, eternity of the world, and mysticism. It appears as though any mind will reach the same truths if it took, as its point of departure, the unsophisticated given of experience and then followed the canons of consistency. The transcendent school might consider true Alfred North Whitehead’s well-known dictum, namely that in philosophy there is no method that surpasses common sense and real insight.
Such an approach places the transcendent school amongst those early pioneers whose ideal was to establish philosophical propositions on a radical freedom from presuppositions. Had this school been philosophically more prolific and had it utilized such a method to its fullest, we would have been in a better position to pronounce more emphatic and elaborate assertions concerning this important and valid method. 17
Behind the new words and expressions of Descartes, Hume and Husserl, which intended to give a radical start for philosophy, stands the old philosophical and methodological practice of the transcendent school. In comparison with the ancients, this method seems to be entirely novel and was not a familiar item in the household of ancient philosophy. Plato could not even conceive of philosophy or philosophers operating outside the social order. Philosophising must begin with the already presupposed concepts and values available in the polis; given ideas can be changed and moulded to establish a better life in the polis and to improve the moral life of the individual. However, such concepts as justice, courage, and virtue were taken for granted by Plato, although he examined their lexical meanings and formulated his own. Aristotle, in spite of being a ruthless examiner of the beliefs of his predecessors and an empiricist rationalist in his approach to philosophical problems, did not conceive of a method for suspending of the traditional world of conventions and values, in favour of the “natural view of the world.”
From a methodological point of view, the resemblance between the transcendent school, Descartes, Hume, and Husserl perhaps is not so much in the details of their outlook as it is in the insistence of these authors upon the ideal of a radical beginning. Our intention is not to identify the ideas of the three modern European thinkers and the transcendent school, but to show that the transcendent school was aware of and had attempted to apply “radicalism” in beginning its philosophy, a view that has been correctly and emphatically endorsed by more modern schools.
The transcendent school was as acutely aware of the impossibility of reversing or annulling the cultural achievements and beliefs of humanity by such a method, as were Descartes, Hume, and Husserl; but it was, as they were, more than certain that this method furnishes man with a new perspective in his outlook on things. The suspension of any kind of belief by these writers was only theoritical, in order to free their philosophising from any preconceived prejudice. The mystical and practical aspects of the transcendent philosophy furnish such a possibility. 18
It may be remembered that Hume disregarded all beliefs and metaphysical assertions and “bracketed” all the assumptions of scientific procedure (such as causality) placing in abeyance the epistemological investigations of former philosophers and the sophisticated framework of the world of tradition. He started from the very fundamentals and questioned all habits of the mind and the conceptions of the phenomenal world. His ideal was an assumption-free description of appearances or impressions. Through his rigorous descriptive method, he found out that there is no reason or guarantee in experience for the necessary connections between ideas. Demonstrations depend on the relations of ideas, and prove only what is conceivable or inconceivable and not what is in fact the case. Apart from relations of ideas, all that we perceive and all we can demonstrate is the existence of our perceptions. There is no reason to suppose that our impressions are supported by a material world, or a subjective self.19 Thus, Hume’s attempt at a presuppositionless beginning led him to a universal scepticism in all knowledge. At best our impressions can yield probable knowledge, and certain knowledge is an unattainable goal. In his caution to keep his assumptions to the minimum, Hume could not re-establish the natural world, the everyday world. His remained a chaotic world of approximations. Hume did not suspend beliefs and all traditional facts in order to reinstate them again at the end of his analysis. He tried to go as far as his radical method permitted him to go in tracing his source of evidence in experience.
On the other hand, by removing man from the context of traditional beliefs, however, the transcendent school practically “bracketed” these beliefs20 for examination by leaving nothing except the self and its confrontation with experience and Being. Like Hume, this school examines the means knowing surrounding phenomena, in order to lay control over the human environment (sayr al afaqi). Its unsophisticated radical empiricism advises us, in the first instance, to study the connections and relationships of items of experience and to study the sources and evidence for changes in phenomena. It, of course, did not explore phenomena with the same epistemological rigor as Hume. But the fact that it started with an assumption-free attitude in exploration and a method in first instance similar to Hume’s seems to be certain. However, the transcendent philosophy does not remain in the state of ignorance or suspension of belief. It achieves perfection in knowledge and establishes its view of reality. The world of beliefs, conventions, and values that is temporarily shattered (through tawbah) by removal from the traditional environment is rebuilt and established by an independent enquiry. Hume was not willing to assert a certain proposition about any external or internal entity outside or inside the mind except the proposition: only impressions exist; whereas transcendent philosophy, as is clear from its mystical aims, arrives at the questions about the very foundations of things: Who am I ? Are there beings like me? Where am I going? What purpose is there for my life? What is my relationship to the surrounding world? Starting with an unbiased background it tries to find answers for these questions. By these questions, one is supposed to have known that he had accepted many false opinions as a result of adhering to tradition and that were he to attain truth and certainty for himself he should momentarily paralyse the effect of all inherited dogmas and previously held opinions.
The transcendent school is like Descartes, who also sought a temporary release from the engulfing world of misty tradition:
“I would have to undertake once and for all to set aside all opinions which I had previously accepted among my beliefs and start again from the very beginning… I have found a serene retreat in peaceful solitude. I will therefore make a serious unimpeded effort to destroy generally all my former opinions. In order to do this, however, it will not be necessary to show they are all false.” 21
As Descartes found peaceful solitude conducive to the application of his methodical doubt, so did the illuminative thinkers.
Again, like Descartes, a transcendent philosopher does not have to prove that all the opinions of his predecessors are false. The extrication of the mind from the corpus of available beliefs through presence is not a mark of scepticism or agnosticism but a means of searching for truth and certainty. By the same token, methodical doubt does not mean that Descartes was either a sceptic or an agnostic; but instead, wishing to find certainty, he was forcibly led to break his old opinions down to their very foundations, because he realised how untrustworthy these opinions were. A transcendent philosopher in his practical philosophising provisionally wishes to suspend every concept and judgment about God, the world and the body by making himself begin his search without any such conceptions. Descartes also wished to “bracket” concepts and judgments about God, the world and the body. 22 This is not because he really doubted the existence of God, the world or the body, but because everything they had learned about them had to be examined even if these ideas were true.
Transcendent philosophy differs from Descartes in that it did not doubt the reality of the external world, nor did it bother to prove its existence. For this school, the proposition, “The world is,” is true. Nor is this school intending to establish a “wonderful science” of philosophy in the manner of Descartes and Husserl. Again, while pointing to the preceding significant resemblances between this school and those authors, one should be aware that these resemblances are not meant to blur the important differences between them. It is true that the transcendent school’s aim, like Descartes’, is to commit us to the slow and laborious search for certainty and truth. However Descartes wanted to found his radical approach to truth and certainty using the deductive method in mathematics and pure reason. In contrast, the transcendent school used a plurality of methods, including the experimental, intuitive, deductive, and behavioural. We are not maintaining that the transcendent school used the method of systematic doubt with the same efficacy and conscious elaboration as Descartes or Husserl. What we are advancing is that this school equally knew the importance of starting all philosophising with a radical beginning and was awake to the impulse of Cartesian Meditations before Descartes.
“The same spirit was responsible for the continuing radicalisation of his own philosophy free from presuppositions.” 23
Also, in so far as Husserl derived his inspiration from the spirit of the Cartesian Meditations, the same resemblances that were discerned between Descartes and the transcendent school can be discerned between the latter and Husserl:
“Then is not this a fitting time to renew his [Descartes’] radicalness, the radicalness of the beginning philosopher: to subject to a Cartesian overthrow the immense philosophical literature with its medley of great traditions, of comparatively serious new beginnings, of stylish literary activity…and to begin with new meditations…at first we shall put out of action all the convictions has been accepting up to now, including all our sciences.” 24
As was remarked earlier, both transcendent philosophy and Husserl’s phenomenology emphasized the notion of going back to the things themselves. The reaction against tradition that harbours unwarranted beliefs, dogmas and authoritarianism are shared by both philosophies. But the transcendent school was not after a universal radical science of philosophy like Husserl. In so far as it stressed a radical beginning to philosophy and the description of surrounding phenomena afresh, transcendent philosophy was a phenomenology. However, apart from other considerations, the significance of phenomenology as propounded by Husserl was not as a philosophy as such, but as a method, discipline or tendency.25 The transcendent school, in stripping man of all beliefs and in making him start from the “beginning” by appealing to a direct encounter with and description of facts, can be considered aware of the phenomenological tendency and its far-reaching significance. In our discussion of the transcendent epistemology, we shall point out the transcendent employment of other aspects of the phenomenological method, such as the phenomenological reduction. 26
Whether the above comparative remarks are accepted or not, it must be granted that the transcendent school, through its attempts to comprehend the “secrets” of the universe, believes in the description and analysis of the aspects, qualities, and relations of experience in the world. The transcendent school believes, as instanced by Sadra,27 that while theories may interpret facts, at the same time they abstract from the realities of the environing world as we encounter them in the locus of immediate experience. Pure theories, without concrete embodiment and without seeing they in their actual operation, estrange the mind from its natural dwelling place, the world of experience.
The transcendent school, like other systems of mystical, transcendent philosophy, does not content itself with the deductive procedure to the exclusion of other procedures. Instead, it tends itself to a plurality of methods characterized by a gradual yet vital growth of movement, a movement of the totality of the human self in its attempt to comprehend and exercise mastery over its surroundings. 28
Although in substance the intimate nature of reality and experience is not altered when using these diverse methods, our attitudes, knowledge, and emotional cosmos progressively and drastically change; and these, in turn, determine our behaviour. For the transcendent school, therefore, knowledge is not a bare conceptual understanding of reality and the systematisation of its laws alone.29 Abstraction or pure theory impoverishes our significant relationship to nature and leaves us suspended in the intellectual landscape of semi-real possibilities, with our inwardness remaining unkindled and dull. On the other hand, true knowledge for this school, as for Socrates, Plato, and Kierkegaard, is that form of understanding that seeps into the depth and breadth of the personality and transforms the whole man. Man is a mystic by nature. For Plato the philosophical enterprise culminates in love; for Kierkegaard it ends in an intense leap to the other “end,” namely, God; for transcendent philosophy it becomes a passionate yearning to become Him.30 The insistence by this school that scientific observation and the givenness of rational processes should in the final analysis embrace the ego in its totality and grip the individual in his very core, places this school among the forerunners of existential thought.31 Consequently, this school emerges as a typically naturalistic mystical philosophy. It believes in the method of the natural sciences but is certainly conscious of the dynamic value of human emotions if when are directed to the right goal. This goal is God, the embodiment of perfection and beauty.
Along with all the preceding emphasis on a radical beginning of philosophy in the aforementioned philosophies, one must understand that absolute radicalness is an ideal that always falls short of complete actualisation. The transcendent school, Descartes, Hume, and Husserl, despite their emphasis on radicalism, could not start their philosophising with an absolute beginning, that is, without any presuppositions at all. Should our enquiry permit an examination of their views on this point, it would not be hard to show that their own views are based on certain presuppositions as well. The temporary “relief” from established dogmas may help facilitate the clarity of the philosopher’s task, but cannot affect a long-lasting overthrow of these beliefs. The complete freedom from presuppositions, as it is clearly shown in the history of philosophy and other compartments of human knowledge such as the sciences, is a misconception and a myth; or, as Marvin Farber says:
“Supposedly radical procedure may turn out to be a means of reinstating a vested tradition of long standing. That positive…findings of real worth may be attained in the process does not alter the fact that such a procedure serves special interests if it finally accords with…any vested tradition.” 32
The claim that philosophy must have a presuppositionless beginning, Farber says, can itself be judged as the greatest presupposition. It is simply impossible to remove oneself from one’s natural and cultural framework, which is a basic and immediate fact of philosophy. For instance, to be able to detect the transcendent school’s presuppositions in his radical attempt, one must try to discern the motives behind its systematic mystical aims. The same applies to Descartes, Hume and Husserl. These motives are generally culturally conditioned and inspired.
One of the transcendent school’s presuppositions was the intention to present the reader with the “secrets of transcendent philosophy” whose basic tenets it believed are true; on the other hand, in Descartes, Hume and Husserl, the motive of certainty was assumed from the very beginning. Descartes’ radical beginning culminated in reinstating the culturally acquired conception of God, the existence of the external world, and the traditional conception of the soul. Hume’s strict empiricism presupposed certainty in sense experience and restored the empirical tradition and the psychological atomism of Locke; whereas Husserl’s radicalism assumed the stream of cogitations, or pure consciousness and certainty of immediate experience as the starting point of philosophy. He also reaffirmed the basic spirit of German idealism in general. The transcendent school, on the other hand reinstated the long-standing tradition of Persian-Muslim philosophy of mysticism. It shelved or suspended traditional beliefs, only to reaffirm them again and in substance after its painstaking search for the truth. The Islamic Persian mystical conceptions of emanation, the creation and eternity of the world, immortality of the soul, and union with God, were suspended by the radical beginning only to reappear in a different style. Despite their determined efforts to dislodge the rock of traditional beliefs and cultural setting, philosophers seem to be endlessly tied to it.
2.3 The Eidetic Reduction
What we called the eidetic reduction in the transcendent method, as we have seen, consists of two sub-reductions (i) from appearances to their essences and (ii) from their essences to the essence of knowing self. Such reductions are reflective, and we call them eidetic because they are only concerned with essence, the word eidetic being derived from “eidos” meaning “pure essence”. The residuum of such reductions are essences– in the former reduction, essences of things, and in the latter, the essence of myself as “I”. Since the word “essence” is central here in the eidetic field, it may be useful if we first know what essence means for transcendent philosophy. Sadra has discussed essence in full details in his Asfar. Obviously, a detailed discussion of his theory of essence does not concern us here simply because it is beyond the boundary of this research. We would preferably refer to it when necessarily applicable. For the time being, regarding its meaning, essence has two senses for Sadra: (i) concept (mafhoom/wojood zihni) and (ii) limit of existence. 33 The eidetic reduction is concerned with the first sense by which our mind reflectively constitutes the essences of things including our “selves” of which we reflectively have knowledge. Whereas, the ontetic reduction, as we will see, is concerned with the second sense of essence which is first elaborated by Sadra and is based on his special theory of being.
2.3.1 The Sadraean Notion Of Essence
Essence (mahyyah) is discussed by Sadra with regard to existence. But the traditional distinction of essence-existence is finally dissolved by Sadra to the benefit of a special kind of existentialism. It is a methodological habit for Sadra to start with the traditional doctrines and then to push them toward his own theories through wonderful interpretations and logical discussions in terms of the transcendent method and aims. This is the case when he starts with this traditional distinction. He argues34 that this distinction is reflectively made. When we are in the level of reflection we suppose that a thing has an existence and an essence. This distinction is good enough to phenomenologically justify our knowledge of ourselves, things and world. 35 Temporarily, and only for the sake of knowledge, we follow Husserl and withdraw the external existence of ourselves, things and the world (even God), in order to describe their essences. We do this so that we may grasp, as far as we can, a clear concept (mafhoom), or mental existence (wojood zihni) of this or that thing with which reflective knowledge is made possible. This epistemological approach to essence indicates that essence is concept and nothing more. Essence, in this sense, is an answer to the question: “what is it?” (ma hoo/hi?). (For example, when one asks: “What is it?” questioning a particular shape, and we answer: “Triangle”.) The answer to this question determines the essence of the thing under question. Sadra says that the answer to such a question is a universal concept, a genus which, as in an Aristotelian table of categories. The categorical analysis of things, however, is in all ways conceptual. It is valid only if we remain in the order of concept. Nevertheless, when we turn away from this order and attend to the order of being the meaning of essence differs: In the latter case, essence is no longer a conceptual answer to the question: “what is it?”; rather, it is the special being of the thing under question: It is what by which the thing is thing (ma beheshshay’ shay’); and that by which a thing is, is for Sadra its special being.36
In the latter sense, Sadra deduces essence from Being. Essence in this sense is the limit of a particular existence; that is to say, what demarks a thing from the others. Of course, this demarker, the essence, is not for Sadra a concept; rather it is the particular being of that thing. Sadra tries to demonstrate this point through several discussions in detail. 37 He concludes that the special being of a thing is the principle of its particularity and individuality. 38
It is true that everything has two folds: one is its existence and another is its essence. However, Sadra explains, these two are not separated in external reality. Rather, their separation exists only in our mind; in the external reality and as a matter of fact, its essence is nothing but its very existence. It is our mind that reflectively understands a thing as a twofold fact. Essence as separated is only produced by the formal reflection and is merely concept. Insofar as it is considered to be mental, it has an epistemological function. Belonging to the order of concept, epistemology as well as any description (including phenomenology), is therefore, concerned only with essence.
We would mention that essence in the sense of concept on which all epistemology, reflection, formalism, logicism and subjectivism are grounded requires us to pick up different methods to achieve, to justify and to demonstrate reflectively what we have and grasp existentially through our everyday experience and ontetic presence.
2.3.2 The Eidetic Field and Plurality of Methods
The transcendent school advocated a plurality of methods of inquiry in the field of the eidetic reduction, and that these reinforced one another in the processes of noetic elevation. No attempt was made to fully designate these methods, though they include those of induction, deduction, and introspection. In employing the first and the third, this school displays a tempered form of the phenomenological tendency and a hint of its notions. These methods belong to and are applied in the eidetic field that is, in transcendent terminology to sayr al afaqi in which we reflectively discover ourselves, the surrounding world, and even God, through these plurality of methods and, based on this discovery, we build experimental and speculative sciences which are all concerned with essences as concepts. Experimental sciences are fundamentally based on “induction”, while speculative sciences employ “deduction”. However, there is a cooperativity between these methods. The inductive and deductive methods cooperate continuously until we discerns the unity of all bodily and animal species. We move from the visible to the invisible by a cooperation of induction and deduction: an intellectual jump from a limited number of observations to a universal and unlimited number, to the universe as a whole.
Moreover, the inductive method prepares us to discover God deductively; the proofs for both the eternity and creation of the world and the like are also instances of the transcendent school’s rigorous application of the deductive method promoted by the loyal help of inductive inquiry.
Not only this; the method of introspection is also applied in this field as well and involves the inductive and deductive methods. Introspection is, fundamentally, a psychological method for self-knowledge (ilm al nafs) which is interrelated with induction and deduction. From an eidetic point of view, we reflectively intuit ourselves as an “I” of the essence of which we have a knowledge — we have a concept of our own selves. This is, of course, reflective; simply because we constitute our essence as “I”, not in the sense that we existentially create it (as done by the ontetic reduction); rather, in the sense that we conceptually abstract an essence as “I” through introspection of ourselves as the agent who reflects and thinks and then exists (Cogito). 39
On this, we may see that this method of introspection seems similar to the Husserlian eidetic intuition by which we grasp the bare essence of the self and constitute essences in reflective consciousness. However, as we will, see this is not the final grasp for transcendent philosophy as it is for Husserlian phenomenology: the eidetic intuition, according to Husserl guarantees certainty of knowledge. Whereas for transcendent philosophy, what we grasp by introspection as well as induction and deduction are grounded by a deeper level of our existence in which we are in touch with the beings, and contact Being; we have not only vision as inspired by intuition (as we see in the history of philosophy); we also live with Being and continually experience the beings with which we are in ontetic touch. It is this deeper level that, according to transcendent philosophy, grounds our constitution of essences. We will see the mechanism of this grounding later. Though Husserlian phenomenology ends up with this eidetic reduction which implies the constitution of pure essences through an eidetic intuition, and does not pass, as does transcendent philosophy, toward a deeper reduction of essences to being, i.e., the ontetic reduction, there nonetheless still seems to be similarities between these two schools regarding the eidetic reduction.
2.3.3 The Transcendent and the Phenomenological Eidetic Reductions
We have already hinted that in applying its method to the eidetic field, the transcendent school has implicitly adopted procedures partly similar to those fulfilled in phenomenology. Now, we would have a closer look here at this point to mention the similarities between these schools and to describe the transcendent notion of the eidetic reduction in parallel to and in comparison with the phenomenological reduction. In doing so, we must be cautious not to sacrifice precision and coherence in interpretation by a random free mode of association imposed by our mind on the facts imbedded in this school’s work. Nor are we trying to “over modernize” this philosophy, thus rendering our comments disproportionate with the original. We are simply showing the modern relevance of an old method and its implications.
There is solid evidence in the transcendent epistemology to uphold the contention that it is implicitly aware of the basic themes and some significant aspects of the phenomenological tendency. This is so because along with the transcendent insights go certain phenomenological elements that are employed without calling them as such. These elements are: the three aspects of the phenomenological reduction, descriptive procedure, intentionality, the noetic and noematic processes of the mind. Transcendent philosophy did not utilize such elements of the phenomenological tendency to the extreme in order to establish, like Husserl, a descriptive science.40 However, in the transcendent approach, the affinities, resemblances to, and anticipations of Husserl’s phenomenological procedure are basic and genuine. The difference between the two schools is one of emphasis, degree and full active application.
The first of the three reductions has already been discussed in connection with our comparison of both thinkers on the issue of the radical beginning of philosophy. We shall categorize this early stage of the transcendent thought by the stipulative phrase: “cultural reduction”; it is characterized by the transcendent hypothetical destruction of all varieties of cultural expression and traditional beliefs; this constituted a break between it and the intersubjective world of human achievements.41 Similarly, Husserl described the initial stage of his phenomenological reduction as the “disconnection” of
“All varieties of cultural expression, works of … the fine arts, of the sciences, also aesthetic and practical values of every shape and form…also realities of…moral custom, law, and religion.” 42
Both schools considered the telos of such a reduction to be man’s freedom from all traditional and transphenomenal beliefs; this reduction leaves only the immediately given and thus excludes the conviction in an independent metaphysical reality. From the outset the self possesses only the freshness and immediacy of objects.
Now, in a Husserlian vein, the transcendent school says that we must commence our descriptive procedure of phenomena. This procedure ultimately leads us to two kinds of phenomenological reductions which one may call “essential” and “transcendental” reductions.
The naturalistic method is, according to transcendent philosophy, intertwined with a strain of subjectivity from the beginning; it entailed reflection and inward appropriation of the results of the experimental search. For instance, soon after we discerned the essence of man, and other essences as well, our mind becomes infused with yearning (shawq) 43 for them. Thus, our attention is turned away from particular objects to their essences. These essences are eidetic, to borrow a term from Husserl. Here our initial performance of essential reduction of our experience can be observed.
One can consider here that Husserl’s phenomenological reduction, the epoche, is not new.44 As the transcendent school depicts, every movement of our mind in describing phenomena contains a reduction of natural objects to pure types, structures or essences. This is why we categorize this movement of thought as essential reduction, a step on the way to purifying phenomena. This method is, therefore, simple, being designated as a persistent description of objects, intuiting their essences and deflecting attachment from these objects to their structures and then progressively eliminating their individual “thisness” or “thatness” of entities. It is obvious that this essential reduction is similar to Husserl’s eidetic reduction, which is also a matter of universality versus individuality.
For the sake of summary, let us highlight the chief possible similarities between these two schools:
a) In a transcendent manner, our mind and experiences possessed a definite intentionality that fulfilled itself in apprehending purified essences and then surpasses these to reach the being.
b) We bracket the natural world, perform a continuous radical suspension of the previous objectifying position, and comprehensively placed the physical world in abeyance.
c) We complement the essential reduction, previously noted, by performing what one may call a transcendental reduction; thus, we not only suspend the physical world and natural attitude, but also reflectively bracket the essences themselves and intentionally focus on the ultimate source of both the natural and “essential” modes of being. For the transcendent school the experience resulting from this reduction is, as Husserl says, “The only experience which may properly be called internal.” 45
d) Every time we discern an essence we rise from the immediacy of particular objects to the level of conscious generality, progressively conceptualise nature, and reduce it to “essential” structures; our mind transforms seeing and perceiving into conceiving. This involves the apprehension of essences and a reference to their denotations. In mind, therefore, there is a bifurcation. From “one point of view” these essences denote (intend) a multiplicity of individual things, and from another they connote transcendent structures. Accordingly, mental essences are both conceptual and ontological and are both immanent and transcendent.
e) With respect to point (d), the mind performs two functions: an “upward” and a “downward” movement. In apprehending essences, the mind is elevated above material objects, bracketing these only temporarily. This only done to confirm our apprehension of essences, after which the mind returns to material objects. Hence there is a two-way traffic between mind and the objects: the experiencing from which result the essences, and in turn the reference of these essences to the experienced.46 Husserl named these two aspects of the cognitive process the noetic and noematic.47 Transcendent philosophy was aware of these two processes of the mind, or at least, it permits such an interpretation.
Furthermore, the types or essences apprehended by mind are stripped of their material contents. Similar to its processes in points (d) and (e) mind through these purified essences “intends” physical phenomena and discover a higher level in which the internal meaning of these essences and that of the entire universe are constituted. This higher level is, according to transcendent philosophy, Being that is the hidden meaning of every descriptive experience and every thing.
In its essential reduction of phenomena, transcendent philosophy does not completely abandon the naturalistic attitude. Rather, it makes has a constant recurrence to it. On the other hand, phenomenology claims to be a non empirical science; but, it seems, as long as the contents of the mind stem from the description of facts, phenomenology cannot divorce itself from the naturalistic world completely. Transcendent philosophy, wisely perhaps, did not go as far as Husserl. Reduction did not categorically cut off the empirical facts from which the essential structures are discriminated. Husserl probably was aware of this point, but for motives of his own did not subscribe to it. 48 It seems that the complete flight and freedom from natural facts is, indeed, a view precipitated by an uncontrolled mode of fancy.
2.4 The Ontetic Reduction
In the above description of the structure of the transcendent method, we saw that there is a special kind of reduction to which there is no correspondence in phenomenology– and perhaps in modern Western philosophy as a whole. This reduction, which we called the ontetic reduction is that cornerstone on which transcendent philosophy is founded.
What is this reduction? A return to Being as such; a return to things, i.e. to their reality in general, and a return of the self to its principle. In the latter case, this reduction, as hinted, consists of two sub-reductions. The ontetic reduction is not parallel to the eidetic reduction, but rather extends beyond the eidetic reduction. While the eidetic reduction ends up in an exploration of essences to reflectively understand the reality of things, this ontetic reduction passes from this level to a deeper ground; to the root of that level to touch the reality (being) of things. While the eidetic reduction ends up in the discovery of a transcendental self, a monad, that implies a radical subjectivism, the ontetic reduction tries to escape from this subjectivism by justifying our knowledge on the basis of the special mode of our being. However, before attempting to understand Sadraean transcendent approach to existence/Being, it will be useful to see the place of the notion of existence in phenomenology.
2.4.1 Husserl Excludes Existence
“Like the neo-Kantian,” Ricoeur writes “Husserl lost the ontological dimension”49 In fact, Husserl’s phenomenology clearly implies essentialism, excluding the notion of existence and Being. The suspension of belief in the existence of a phenomenon or the explicit doubt (following Descartes) that the phenomenon exists, is what Husserl referred to as “bracketing”. This procedure is to concentrate on “what” of the phenomenon in order to ascertain its essential content.49+1 Therefore, the preconception that we possess about the nature of existence is put aside.
Fink has stated that Husserl avoided the notion of existence and Being or the “ontological problem”– the problem of “how the pure being of an existent is related to the being-an-object of this existent”. As Fink states, this problem has been rejected by Husserl as a “falsely put problem”50 This seems to be the result of his subjectivism which is based on the notion of essence.
Every fact, every individual subject, according to Husserl, has an essence, a permanent cluster of essential predicates by virtue of which it is what it is and is able to receive accessory and contingent determinations: a thing may be converted into an idea, and eidetic intuition is always possible. But how does one pass from the essence to the individual? Husserl makes this transition by means of the notion of the eidetic singularity. This notion presupposes that the eidetic individual is not the empirical individual existing here and now: Essence, even if singular, is not existence, although both are irreducible substrata for every new syntactical form. Yet there is an essence of the existing particular, under which the particular is immediately subsumed– subsumption being understood as the transition from the eidetic to the empirical plane rather than as the subsumption, within the eidetic realm, of the species under the genus. For us to apprehend this essence, concrete eidetic singularity must be distinguished from abstract eidetic singularity: the abstract is the object related to a whole as a dependent part. Species and genus are necessarily dependent, hence abstract; but the concrete is the independent essence which, without being contained in a whole, contains dependent essences within itself: the phenomenal thing, which is a concrete essence, contains the abstract essences of extension and quality. The individual is thus the this-here whose material essence (or whose eidetic singularity) is a concrete51 and which hence merits being termed “individual,” that is, indivisible. By granting such an extension to essences, 52 Husserl turns to existence as such. He certainly does not deduce existence from essence, and it is worth noting that the notion of dependence is interpreted in such a way that the general depends of the singular, just as the formal depends on the material: The purely logical form, for example the categorical form of object, is dependent with respect to all that is the matter of objects.53 The individual is, therefore, primordially individual.
Existence as such, it follows, is independent logically, but not with respect to logic itself. Existence is not the radical other of essence. The theory of essence is the expression of a subjectivism which would allow all essences to be termed a priori. If the Husserlian conception of the a priori has not appeared to be as rigorously constitutive in the relation of subject to the external object, it is because it does not encounter outside of it a content to be constituted. In this perspective all essences are instituted by the transcendental subjectivity. Thus Husserl would end in a rationalistic empiricism in the sense that the return to the things themselves would be a return of the cogito to itself. For Husserl, essence is more than a word since it is the object of an intuition which is fulfilled; yet intuition is filled by the individual as example and as infima species. On contrary, if essence for Husserl is not completely nominal, existence on the other hand is somewhat so; the object is only an example, that is, a specimen. 53+1
Husserl ends up in a kind of essentialism which, considered from a transcendent point of view, has no exit from the maze of reflection. If essence is true and not existence, a transcendent philosopher like Sadra may ask, how can we get out from the trap of subjectivism? Husserl’s ultimate appeal to the eidetic intuition gives us nothing but essence, and essence is the truth of consciousness and the subject. Moreover, the nominalistic approach Husserl has taken regarding existence seems, from a transcendent point of view, the fundamental error. We will mention later the Sadraean analysis of the essence which leads to existence. But let us have a glance at the existential phenomenology’s response to Husserl, before attending Sadra’s theory.
2.4.2 Existential Phenomenology Encounters Existence
The existential phenomenologists purported to supply the lack of existence or Being in the Husserlian Phenomenology. “In Fink view” Farber writes “this is the most fundamental problem which phenomenology omits because of its shrinking from speculative thought.” 54
Heidegger also complains that the “question [of Being] has been forgotten,” 55 and “as long as the truth of Being is not thought all ontology remains without its foundation.”56 He applies phenomenology to detect an answer to this question. “Phenomenology is the name for the method of ontology”57 and therefore, the phenomenological reduction for him sounds a different meaning and task:
“For Husserl the phenomenological reduction … is the method of leading phenomenological vision from the natural attitude of the human being whose life of consciousness and its noetic-noematic experiences, in which objects are constituted as correlates of consciousness for us. Phenomenological reduction means leading back from the apprehension of a being … to the understanding of the being of this being.” 58
Husserl introduced an explicitly “transcendental reduction”, which reduced all objects to products of the transcendental self. It is on this point that Heidegger makes his most radical break with Husserl and the subjectivistic thought. We need not postulate a “thinking substance” or “ego” as this subject, as Descartes did. Nor must we accept this notion of “I Think” as a necessary condition or a “unifying principle” for knowledge, as Kant did. In short, we do not accept a distinction between subject and object. Heidegger suggests the rejection of this distinction, and with it the rejection of the innumerable epistemological problems which have plagued modern philosophy. According to Heidegger, there is no self. There is simply “Being-in-the-world.” The world is no more “bracketable” than the transcendental self is necessary. Once we rid ourselves of the transcendental self we save ourselves from philosophical scepticism as well. It is here that Heidegger speaks of Dasein instead of the self. Considering the being of the self, Heidegger calls the human being Dasein, literally translated as “Being- there”:
“Dasein is an entity which does not just occur among other entities. Rather it is distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being, that Being is an issue for it…. It is peculiar to this entity that with and through its Being, this Being is disclosed to it. Understanding of Being is itself a definite characteristic of Dasein’s Being.” 59
Dasein has “being in such a way that one has an understanding of Being.”60 Because of this essential relationship of Dasein (human being) to Being, the problem of Being must be approached through an investigation of Dasein;
“Therefore, fundamental ontology, from which alone all other ontologism can take their rise, must be sought in the existential analytic of Dasein.” 61
“If to interpret the meaning of Being becomes our task, Dasein is not only the primary entity to be interrogated; it is also that entity which already comports itself, in its Being, towards what we are asking about when we ask this question.” 62
The claim that we may come to under-stand Being through an analysis of Dasein looks dangerously similar to the traditional Cartesian approach to philosophy. Descartes wanted to cap-true (necessary) truths about the world (Being) and began with the discovery and analysis of the subject, of the cogito, of experience and knowledge. Similarly, Kant approached his theory of knowledge by examining the subjective or a priori conditions for experience and knowledge, and Husserl began his phenomenological investigations with an examination of the reduced “pure” ego. Now, in spite of his departure from these philosophers, it might appear that Heidegger is also beginning his investigation with an examination of the subject of experience and knowledge, for the analysis of Dasein is explicitly presented as an answer to the traditional metaphysical question of self-identity. It is of the utmost necessity, therefore, that we understand that the analysis of Dasein for Heidegger is not the examination of a subject, or an ego, or consciousness, and that the “self-identity” which becomes a problem in the question “Who is Dasein?” is a very different problem than it becomes for Descartes, Kant, and Husserl. The nature of Dasein becomes the focal point of Being and Time, for it is with this new conception of human being that Heidegger intends to defend his attacks on Husserl’s conception of phenomenology, to commence his answer to the “problem of Being,” and to attack Western philosophy as misguided.63
Other existential phenomenologists like Sartre have more or less followed the Heideggerian trace to supply the lack of existence or Being in the Husserlian phenomenology. Objecting against the existential phenomenologists, Farber says:
“It may be observed that if Husserl missed this problem [i.e., Being or existence], then so did the existentialists. Only Husserl had a right –and in fact an obligation–to “miss” it and they did not.” 64
A discussion as to how far the existential phenomenology’s attempt to supply that lack has been successful is beyond our present research. However, in order to distinguish some differences between the existential phenomenology’s and the transcendent philosophy’s approaches toward existence or Being, we say that although they both claim a return to Being or existence, what is discussed by the existential phenomenologists actually is not existence or Being as such; rather, it is ultimately confined to a special being, that is, to the sum of the cogito. For instance, as we saw in the above quotation from Fink, he devoted the “ontological problem” to the “being of the existent”. Heidegger, who anew projects the question of being, also discovers it in the being of Dasein, namely the subject considered as a special existent; in the kind of being of the transcendental “constitutor”. He says:
“The question of the meaning of being is the most universal and the emptiest of questions, but at the same time it is possible to individualize it very precisely for any particular Dasein.” 65
Perhaps it is why Husserl critically remarks:
“Thus existence (Dasein) in man is equivalent to understanding of being”; and he infers from Heidegger’s text that existence may well be identified with “understanding of being.” 66 It may also be the case when one remembers that the notion of Being is the “emptiest” for Heidegger, and he then returns to the notion of “nothing” in his What is Metaphysics?67 (as does Sartre). So considered, Being is always grounded by Dasein (at least in Being and Time) and raised in the “horizon of time”: “Our provisional aim”, he writes, “is the interpretation of time as the possible horizon for any understanding whatsoever of Being”68
Apart from evaluation of Heideggerian and Sartrean notions of Being, and despite the probable similarities, the above concept is not completely applicable to transcendent philosophers like Sadra who considers Being as such, and sets forth a new sense of Being.
2.4.3 The Transcendent Notion Of Being
As we have pointed out, Husserlian phenomenological reduction dismisses Being or existence, and contains the eidetic reduction applying it to discover the essences constituted by/in consciousness. Interpreting the phenomenological reduction, existential phenomenology passed toward existence and Being in order to avoid Husserlian subjectivism. In parallel to this effort of existential phenomenology, and in an absolutely different manner and aims, the transcendent (Sadraean) philosophy aims at reducing all entities, essences, consciousness, and even the self itself (mind, subject, spirit etc.) to Being. This reduction is what we call the ontetic reduction. Applied to the self, this reduction implies a mutual relationship between the self and Being. Let us here speak of a few comparative points concerning this reduction:
Like Heidegger, Sadra, turns to Being, saying that Being is the subject of philosophy. 69 However, contrary to Heidegger who discovers the meaning of Being by analysing Dasein–i.e., the being of a special kind of being70–Sadra keeps himself dealing with Being-as-Such. In the opening of his major work Asfar71 he tries to demonstrate the primordiality of Being (asalatolwojoud): Being is the root. He fundamentally distinguishes Being from quiddity, existence from essence and asserts that nothing is real except existence or Being– No Being, then no reality or truth; no Being, and no beings nothing ever emerge.
Again, like Heidegger, Sadra says that existence or Being which is reality or truth, is never captured by the mind which can only capture essences and general notions. This does not mean for Sadra, however, that we have no access to the reality of Being (as one may say about Kantian noumenon); rather, we are living in, with, and by Being. Since we are rooted in Being and our minds are emerged from and by Being as its constantly flowing manifestation (see next chapter), we then are always living with/in it.
According to Sadra, we are “at home with” Being, to borrow a phrase from Heidegger. He expressly says:
“The ways toward Being are as numerous as the selves.” 72 This way to Being, however, is prior to and root of all supposed aspects of a being. In other words, these aspects whatsoever are in fact reduced to Being, because they are determinations (ta’ayyonat) of Being manifested as this or that being. If there is an understanding of Being, as Heidegger maintains,73 it is because we already are in touch with Being. To be sure, it is not subject to a logical analysis. However, like Heidegger who tries to achieve an analysis of the understanding of Being, Sadra also holds that it is possible to try for an analysis of our mysterious, non-reflective living with-in Being.
To do this, Sadra uses the transcendent method; as Heidegger uses the phenomenological method. Heidegger’s employment of the phenomenological method, of course, implies a reorientation of that method.74 Interpreting the phenomenology as a method for ontology, Heidegger adds to Husserlian reduction two new stages: construction and destruction; and he combines them in an expression: de-construction;75 because “construction in philosophy” he says “is necessarily deconstruction, that is to say, a de-constructing of traditional concepts.” 76
As a conclusion one may conclude that the de-constructive method is the fruit of the phenomenological method when applied to ontology.
Without confusing the issue, 77 one may consider that the ontetic reduction Sadra uses emphasis on a leap in parallel to Heidegger’s de-construction. De-construction by which Heidegger returns to the history of philosophy to discover the meaning of being in the horizon of time, means for Sadra, if at all, deconstruction of essentialism, and ontetic reduction to Being. This means that we should demark ,in Sadraean manner, the realm of essence–which is subject to eidetic reduction and, as Sadra maintains,78 structures the subject or the mind and reflective thought– on the one hand, and the realm of Being– which is ground and reality of, say, the self and its ontetic presence– from the other hand. According to Sadra, only by this manner– to borrow Heidegger’s term, by deconstructing essentialism– we can reach the source of knowledge.79 We will consider Sadra’s analysis of essence in the following section; but before shifting to that section one question may be answered here: Why does Sadra emphasis so much on the, so to speak, deconstruction of essentialism? We can readily extract answer to this question from within Sadra’s system. We say “extract” because he is not asked such a question, then, there is no explicit answer to such a hidden question. We can nevertheless see how an answer follows from his general position.
What is real and true is only Being. Essence is not real and truth in itself; rather its truth or reality comes from its mental being. Essence is the mind’s abstraction of external or internal objects; they are constituted in our mind by imagination and then constitute our reflective consciousness and thought. Sadra maintains that our reflection occurs only through essences. He holds that our reflection always analyses an entity in two aspects: its existence and its essence. But in the external world there is no essence. External entity, Sadra says, is a manifestation of Being, and so its reality is only pure being. It has no essence, or the only essence it has its existence. Sadra tries to demonstrate this by establishing principles like the conservation of Being and the hierarchical structure of being. If so, essences are constituted in the mind by imagination through the process of perception, and the mind categorizes them so that it can reflectively think. In short, according to Sadra the structure of thought is essentialistic (eidetic in Husserlian terms). But how can we escape from the maze of reflection? One may ask why one must escape, but we must understand that Sadra seeks to justify an ontetic presence as the basis of mystical apprehension. To escape the maze, then, one must break down the palace of essentialism. If essence forms the texture of reflection and reflection is supposed to be surpassed, then there is no way is for Sadra except to deconstruct essentialism.
2.4.4 Sadra’s Existential Analysis of Essence:
Contrary to Husserl, existence is not somehow nominal and void for Sadra. He strongly asserts that nothing is real except existence. But this existence, which is sole reality, is never captured by the mind, which can only capture essences and general notions. Hence there is a fundamental difference between the general notion of being or existence and those of essences. Since, for Sadra, essences do not exist per se but only arise in the mind from particular forms or modes of existence and hence are mental phenomena, they can, in principle, be fully known by the mind; but the general notion of existence that arises in the mind can not know or capture the nature of existence, since existence is the objective reality and its transformation into an abstract mental concept necessarily falsifies it. What exist is the uniquely particular, and hence cannot be known by the conceptual mind, whereas an essence is by itself a general notion and hence can be known by the mind. No wonder then, that philosophers who operated by an abstract notion of existence, declared existence to be an empty concept. For, they argue, it is true that there is no reality to correspond to this abstract notion of existence. But their capital mistake was to think that the reality of existence is just this abstract concept:
“All notions that arise from [our experience of] the external world and are fully grasped by the mind, their essences are preserved [in the mind] even though the mode of their existence changes [in the mind]. But since the very nature of existence is that it is outside the mind and every thing whose nature it is to be outside of the mind can never possibly come into mind–or, else, its nature will be completely transformed–hence, existence can never be [conceptually] known by any mind.” 80
It is true that there is an abstract notion of existence arising in the mind out of different existents, but it is equally true that that abstract notion, far from giving us the real nature of existence, falsifies that real nature. If existence was to be treated only as an abstract general notion, then it must be regarded as some sort of an essence, on the order of a genus. Sadra has forbidden this earlier on the ground that existences are unique and no general notion can do justice to the uniqueness of real beings. Further, being static, each instance of an essence is identically the same. No instance of an essence is a unique individual but only a case and yields indifferently the same result as any other instance of the same essence.
Essence, says Sadra, is nothing in itself, and whatever being it possesses is derived from its manifestation of and relation to the absolute existence:
“They [i.e., essences], so long as they remain unilluminated by the light of existence, are not something to which the mind can point by saying whether they exist or not…They eternally remain in their native concealment [of non-being] and their original state of non-existence…They cannot be said to be or not to be — neither do they create, nor are they objects of creation [the objects of creation being the contingent existences, not essences]…[contingent] existences, on the other hand, are pure relations [to absolute existence]; the mind can not point to them either when they are considered out of relation with their sustaining Creator, since these have no existence independently. However, in themselves, these existences are concrete realities, uninfected by the indeterminacy [of essences], pure existence without [the admixture] of essences and simple lights without any darkness. 81
By “conjoined” or “united”, Sadra does not mean that as a matter of fact two things or realities come together and are united, since, according to him, essences possess no reality of their own: It is the modes of existence that necessarily give rise to essences, wherein existence is the real, and essence the subjective element. When existence becomes further and further diversified into modes, these modal existences generate diverse essences.
Let us now revert to the Sadraean analysis of essences which terminates in pure existence. The steps in this analysis are: (1) the genus is identical with or parallel to the potentiality of matter, while the differentia is identical with the actualised form; (2) that genus, because of its imperfection and indeterminacy, requires and is perfected by the differentia; (3) that differentia is the only reality, since genus, as a pure potentiality in the nature of matter, can not form part of the actual existence; (4) that, hence differentia equals existence; and (5) that what is called “species” or “specific nature” is nothing but a classification of objects by the mind since actual existents exhibit certain characteristics whereby the mind is able to compare and contrast them and put them in different classes.
In his discussion of the Aristotelian dualism of matter-form (in the object) or that of genus-differentia (in the subject), Sadra attempts to insert this dualism logically into the concept of essence. He assigns it to a phenomenology of mind. 82 His analysis of these dualisms ends up in a sort of existence, which he called differentia, that the traditional sense. Whereas matter refers to something in the real world, genus is in the realm of concepts; but in either case, what concretely comes to exist both in the real world and in the mind is the differentia for both matter and genus “lose themselves in its concreteness.”
If we consider more closely the relationship between genus and differentia, it appears that the Aristotelian distinctions here are purely mental, for in the reality only the differentia exists. This is brought out clearly by a consideration of “simple” differentia as opposed to composite ones. In the case of “black colour”, e.g., what exists is black and apparently there is nothing in reality corresponding to “colour”. In view of this, some philosophers have denied that, in the case of colours, there is either a general genus or a genuine differentia. This, however, is a capital mistake. For although the analysis into genuses and differentia is only a mental operation, there is some warrant in reality to make this distinctions and classifications. Nevertheless, what this shows is that existential reality is not composed of genuses and differentia but of modes of existence, i.e., simple differentia. For, in truth, there is no such thing as a composite differentia in reality; there are only successive modes of existence. In this context, Sadra asserts that the whole reality is nothing but a succession of differentiate which, in turn, is nothing but successive modes of existence.
Based on the Aristotelian matter-form formula, transformed into a genus-differentia formula, the status of the differentia has been assigned a far greater importance in the system of Avicenna, and particularly by declaring differentia to be simple and irreducible, it has become allied to the unique and unanalyzable fact of existence. But different, for him, is not identical with existence which in some sense stands outside the matter-form or genus-differentia formula even though the differentia helps bring the genus into an existential situation. Differentia, indeed, as part of the specific essence (composed of genus and differentia) is subsumable under a genus and is, therefore, part of what Aristotle called “secondary substance”.
For Sadra, on the other hand, the differentia is neither a substance nor an accident, since it is identical with individual existence. To support this last proposition, Sadra develops an argument which interprets the genus-differentia formula in accordance with his doctrine of the emergent existence or “substantial change” and thus assimilates it into the essence-existence principle.
In the progression of reality, we see that the movement is from the potential to the actual where every prior is matter or genus for every posterior: wood, e.g., is matter or genus for a chair. Now both matter and form are described as secondary substances by Aristotle. In the case of primary matter itself–which does not exist–one can distinguish a quasi-genus and a quasi-form element. For, primary matter is characterized by pure potentiality; hence, it is something that has potentiality, where something stands for genus and has potentiality stands to for the form. But of course, the conjunction of the two is still a mere potential, without actual existence. Sadra, therefore, insists that prime matter is not a pure genus but a species, since it does possess a differentia and it is thanks to this differentia that it has a positive tendency of potentiality which brings it out of pure nothingness and, further, that this species is restricted to one individual, i.e., that something which has the potentiality of existence.
Just as prime matter has only a potentiality for existence, so is the case with every genus relative to its form or differentia, the only difference between prime matter and other genuses being that prime matter, even with its differentia, is only potential, whereas other genuses become actual when a differentia becomes available. Now, since a genus is only a potentiality relative to its differentia, and since genus at the same time is “secondary substance”, it follows that a secondary substance does not exist. It is a mere “something”, a mere logical subject, not a real subject. Real subjects are only existential objects, which are the differentia, not genuses. Further, since the potential is caused and actualised by something real, it follows that genus is brought into existence and actualised by the differentia. The differentia is the final cause, the perfection of genus. With the differentia, genus as such evaporates. It is not the case that the differentia is simply “added to” or exists alongside of the genus in a thing; it is the actualised genus; it is the thing. Hence Sadra equates the differentia with existence and pronounces it to be a mode of existence.
In the entire progression of existence, the preceding mode of reality becomes genus for and “loses itself” in the succeeding differentia:
“It has become clear to you from what we have said ….that that whereby a thing is constituted and exists…is nothing but the principle of the last differentia wherein all the preceding differentia and forms which become united in it come to be nothing but potentialities, conditions and instruments for the reality that is the last differentia.” 83
Thus, this movement represents a progressive diminution of essence and preponderance of existence until we reach the pure existence without essence.
From this account follows the unreality of species, or specific essences. A species is obtained by the mind by combining a genus with a differentia and subsuming the latter under the former. But existentially, the case is exactly opposite: there the genuses lose themselves in the concrete reality of the differentia and vanish without a trace. They become simple and unique modes of existence. How does the mind then carry out its analyses and produce definitions with their multiplicity of concepts? Sadra’s reply to this question is based on his view of the disparate nature of the realm of existence and the logical or conceptual mind. In the existential world there is existence or modes of particular existence where every existent is basically unique. When, however, these existents are presented to the conceptual mind (as opposed to the true nature of the mind which is a member of the transcendent existential Intelligible realm), the latter extracts from them certain “essential” and “accidental” qualities whereby it classifies them. This classification, although it certainly does not exist in the external world, is, nevertheless, warranted by it for the mind. That is to say, it is only an operation of the mind although not a fictional one:
“The reality and being of the differentia consists only in a particular and unique existence of the essences, which are true individuals. What exists externally is, therefore, only [modes of] existence but, thanks to sense-perception, they give rise in the conceptual mind to certain general or specific notions (i.e., genuses and differentia), some of which are attributed to their essence and others to their accidental qualities. The mind then attributes these existentially to these objects.” 84
It can be concluded from Sadra’s discussion that in reality, there is nothing but existence, and all essences our mind constitutes in the eidetic reduction are in fact the determinations (ta’ayyonat) of existence and epiphanies of Being. Derived from the transcendent method of the ontetic reduction, this idea is Sadraean turning point toward his transcendent existentialism on which all beings are only emanative entities manifested from Being– a specific theory of being on which Sadra reconsiders the philosophical problems in general. It is, however, the application of the transcendent method to the nature of the self that concerns us in this research. Following this procedure, we should detect the ontetic structure of the self in the following chapter.
CHAPTER THREE
The Ontetic Structure of the Self
In this chapter, we will proceed to see how the Sadraean transcendent existentialism interprets the ontetic structure of the self on the basis of his special theory of being. In this study we follow three interrelated aims: (i) we will first introduce Sadraean approach to the reality of the self, that is, to its being; (ii) and then we will continue to examine the relation of the self with other beings in the existential context; (iii) we will finally clarify that there is no self in subjectivistic sense in the order of being; what is there is only a performative, current experience.
3.1 Primary Considerations
Sadra widely discussed the elements of his theory of the self widely in four of the nine volumes (I,II,III,IIX) of his huge and hardly understandable Asfar1 in a sophisticated complex of logical, ontological, epistemological and mystical idioms, metaphors and ideas. Then, as expressed by commentators like Kompani, 2 it seems too difficult to grasp the depth of his theory; perhaps because he sometimes goes beyond our conceptual, eidetic thought and requires us to sympathise with him in his apprehending of the truth. In this article, we are not concerned with all aspects of his theory of the self, nor to detect all the elements of the Sadraean perspective. All what we want to do here, is to depict his description of the reality of the self which is for him, a presential cognition. For Sadra, the reality of self is hidden in its special mode of being. 3
As Sadra says, and presupposes, man is the only full imprint of God (Noskhih i kamel i Ilahi) among the beings, a microcosm in macrocosm, to this latter the former corresponding4 by way of wisdom– that is, the performative self’s mystical experience of Being. In a Heideggerian manner, Sadra also maintains that it is only man that has this special being among the others, but unlike Heidegger who locates this speciality in the temporality of Dasein’s nature, Sadra underlines God’s devotion of man to Himself; this is, Sadra believes, what makes man’s existence special. 5 However in agreement with Heidegger, Sadra holds that the nature of the self can not be grasped by analytically eidetic reflection. The reason is clear from his perspective: the nature of the self is his special being and being can not be caught by essential thought simply because being is not a category to be essentialised and conceptualised then understood by the eidtic reflection. To apprehend the nature of the self, we need to leave the eidetic thought and simply come up in the light of Being; if so, we would then experience the being of the self. Otherwise, the nature of the self always remains mysterious and, as easily seen in Husserl’s phenomenology, far beyond our reflective understanding. This is why Sadra in his description of the nature of being, starts from the structure of Being itself not, as Heidegger does, from the analysis of the being of the self. Instead of seeing the being of man in the horizon of temporality, Sadra finds it in the context of Being itself. He argued that Being manifests itself in the form of beings in such a hierarchic (tashkiki) manner that they are continuously and ever-lastingly dependent on it, so that if Being deprives them from its light they will vanish. Applying this theory to the nature of the self, this manifestation implies a double nature for the self in particular: The self is dependent on (i.e., being illuminated in the transcendent terminology) and present to (i.e., being absorbed) Being at the same time. It is this double nature of the self that makes it special among the beings. While all beings are manifested and illuminated entities from Being, it is only the self that is absorbed in Being at the same time. The reason is that the absorption is, according to him, an experientially conscious presence before Being. It is its factual practice in everydaness (in Heidegger’s term), and, in Sartrean terms, the unbounded unreflective consciousness. This kind of presence, that is, this kind of existential, non-reflective, presential cognition makes the self distinct from the other beings. It is this consciousness, Sadra says, that is the basis of our actual life and the source of our concrete, social, and moral dimensions, as well as of our intentional, reflective thought. Such a consciousness is already approved by the transcendent mystics when they spoke of their higher mystical experiences; however, it has not been theorised in a philosophical manner; nor has it been justified for the ordinary life of non-mystics. It was Sadra who first elaborated such a mystical idea in the form of a philosophical theory applied to our experientially ordinary life. The nature of the self is this presential cognition which covers all aspects of the self’s life simply because this consciousness is his special mode of being.
3.2 The Self as Presence in/to Being
Sadra built up the reality of the self as a special being that thanks to its transcendent nature has an eternal dependency on Being. This, Sadra holds, allows us to consider the self as a factual presence immersed and absorbed in Being itself rather than to consider Being as a merely transcendental subject who stands beyond our consciousness–as one may see in Husserlian theory. Rather, Sadra moves in a similar way in which Heidegger and the existential philosophers move later. Dasein is introduced and defined by them as “being-in-the-world”. Dasein cannot be distinguished from its existence in the world. Therefore, it makes no sense to suppose that we know ourselves better than we know the world, and it makes no sense to say that we know about ourselves in a different way than we know about the world. We know ourselves and the world identically, for we (as Daseins) and the world constitute a single phenomenon:
“The compound expression “Being-in-the-world” indicates in the very way we have coined it, that it stands for a unitary phenomenon.” 6
Just as they consider the self as Dasein, that is as a being-in-the-world who has an ontic-ontological structure in the horizon of temporality, Sadra also consider the self as a being absorbed in-the-Being itself, that is as a being-present-before-Being who has an pre-ontological structure; and this implies the self to be in the world as a factual, living and vital reality rather than as an abstract, transcendental (in the Kantian or Husserlian sense) or epistemological presupposition as we may see in modern subjectivistic philosophies. For Sadra, as for the existential phenomenologists, the self is already a being whose “facticity” is a pure need to supply his perfection; and this implies the self to be already involved in the order of being before falling in the order of concept. The self is absorbed and immersed in Being through which the self journeys to discover its mysterious land. To be so is, for Sadra as for Heidegger, to be present: present before Being (in-the-world for Heidegger) which implies its present for itself. To this implication Sadra applies a special name: the presential cognition which will concern us from the next section onward. Instead we would now turn here to the Sadraean notion of absorption, i.e., the presence before(or in) Being to depict its meaning a bit more so far as the reality of the self as presential cognition is concerned.
Through his detailed discussions, Sadra arrives at a position of understanding how to situate the self as presented before Being. As hinted, he uses the words “absorption” and “immersion” to indicate this peculiar situation of the self. When the whole reality of the self as a transcendent being is nothing but a pure existential dependency on Being, the state of “absorption” or “immersion” in Being does not seem odd, or, to use a stronger word, inconceivable for Sadra. The special dependency which indicates “hanging on,” and being “held by,” Being, is, according to Sadra, implies that the self is absorbed and immersed in Being. Such absorption is, for Sadra, a fulfilment to be achieved by the self through its pre-ontological experiences. It is, Sadra holds, the whole existential feature of the self as a pure, transcendent existence to be “immersed in” Being. It is its very existence, which it is not even possible to think of except in the light of thinking of Being, which is its substantive ground for being.
From a subjectivistic point of view, we may always think of our selfhood independent of thinking of any principle; and it clearly denies the validity of such a Sadraean analysis of the selfhood as a pure, transcendent existence absorbed in Being. This is so, a subjectivist may say, because if it were the case that the self, thanks to be totally dependent on another, could not even be independently understood and thought of, it would be impossible for us to ever have had the impression of our selfhood on its own. But the fact that we do have the idea of our selfhood on its own counts as sufficient reason for believing that the self is not totally dependent on another in this extreme sense of absorption.
Sadra answers such a point of view: this so-called impression of the selfhood is the introspective self which comes into the mind through the conceptualisation and introspection of the factual performative truth of the self. The transcendent reality of the self is the performative one which talks, feels, thinks, wishes, judges, decides, and has sensation, imagination, and intellection, and is acquainted with all these acts and powers of its apprehension. The performative self is that which always acts and perceives and is never acted upon, or perceived, by itself or by another, except through conceptualisation. Everyone can, by way of introspection, conceptualise the factual reality of his own selfhood as well as those of others. Despite this understanding, it should not be maintained that our impression of the self is the very reality of the self or even a real and truthful representation of it.
If we make a pedagogical statement by saying, for example, “’by another” is a special phrase,” the phrase “by another”, as the subject matter of this particular statement, is not really being used with its proper special nature. This is not a substitution instance of a preposition at all; and, for that matter, it cannot be a true representation of the objective reality of “by another”. Rather, it is a merely introspective conceptualisation of that reality which we speak of in the factual circumstances of our ordinary language. But if I say, in a normal instance, that “I am sitting by the window,” or “the self is dependent on Being,” I have truly used these prepositions with their own objective meanings. This is because their reality is illustrated by given examples instead of by generalization and conceptualisation.
If a transcendent being, such as the self, is expressible only in terms of a special phrase, e.g., “by” or “on” and so on, its reality, too, like any other preposition, Sadra argues, will not be understandable unless it is absorbed into the meaning of Being. An introspection and representation of a special phrase is a complete distortion and, in a way, a falsification of the objective truth of such a linguistic entity. Likewise, Sadra maintains, an introspection of the self is an illusory representation of its existential reality, and cannot be taken as its true representation. In transcendent language, the word “illusory” is frequently used to signify this, that is, to conceptualise and interpret the unitary truth of a reality which can never truly and exactly be represented.
It is worth noting here that Sadraean transcendent philosophy denies that the self can ever know itself, and still less be known by others, through representation. Thus the independent impression that we may have from the selfhood of ourselves can never characterize the truth value of the reality of the self as it exists in another. This reality, as we will see, can only be apprehended through the presential cognition.
Since the reality of the self is nothing but a special being, that is, an existential presence before Being, the self then is hanging on Being which is eternal and absolute perfection. That is to say, the self cannot be thought of accurately as distinguished from Being which is the principle of its being. This existential reality of pure dependence upon Being gives rise to the notion of a kind of existential “absorption.” This means that the reality of the self as a transcendent entity is to be known as some thing “over-absorbed” in Being. As Sadra analysed, this transcendent sense of absorption is, therefore, directly derived from the existential meaning of the special truth of emanation, namely, “dependence on”, “issuing from.” “held by,” and so on. However, Sadra maintains that the self stands out–in a Heideggerian term–amongst the beings due to its presence before Being; that is, the self absorbed in Being can experience its transcendent being so that through its everydayness it can grasp its reality in an absolutely mystically pre-ontological apprehension called “the presential cognition.” 7
Therefore, absorption in Being, which is presence before Being, as ultimately understood by Sadra, is a living, performative, non-reflective and pre-ontological experience which in its high form shapes the mystical apprehensions and in its ordinary form shapes our commonsensical experiences and inspirations throughout our everydayness life. This current experience of Being, “the presential cognition”, that the self possesses by its absorption in Being (or, to borrow Heidegger’s phrase, by its being-in-the-world), builds up the factual reality of the self as a being-toward-perfection ( al wojood al taleb li al kamel):
“Through going ahead toward perfection, the self becomes unitary, then this unitary is practical (factual) and is consciousness.”8
Sadraean “self,” then like Heideggerian “Dasein” and Sartrean “for-itself,” is continuously in the process of realizing its existential potentialities. It is for Sadra the authentic root of all what we have, do and know 9, and since Sadra maintains that absorption is experience of the very transcendent being which the self is, then it can easily be seen that this experience, i.e., the presential cognition is identified with the being of the self. Not only this, since the transcendent reality of the self can only be grasped in this presential cognition, then the presential cognition, it can be concluded, is the being of the self. In this relation Sadra clearly writes that this consciousness:
“[I]s neither a negation nor a relation; rather it is existence; however, not any sort of existence. It is an actual special being which is pure [i.e., non-eidetic].”10
He ultimately says that we can not logically define this consciousness, just as we can not define our special “being”. We only grasp it in our living experience of Being,11 because there is no representation of this consciousness.12 However, it does not deprive us to reflectively assign a conceptual essence to it and think of it. This reflective thinking of it, however, can not show its reality to us, because such a thinking itself is grounded by that existential consciousness. 13
From this remark, it must be clarified that this presential cognition is a special notion that goes beyond/behind the modern senses of the word whether, Cartesian or non-Cartesian.
“On the Cartesian view, consciousness is definitive of the mental. This concept of mentality implies that consciousness cannot be a relational characteristic of mental states, and that it may be inexplicable.” On the second view, “consciousness is not essential to mental states, and thus consciousness may well be an extrinsic characteristic of whatever mental states have it.” 14
Both of these concepts are reflective and eidetic (non-ontetic) simply because they are intentional, whether or not we accept consciousness to be essential to mental states. Moreover these concepts presuppose that consciousness has object and representation; in other word, these concepts all are epistemic and in this sense presuppose subjectivity to be of the essence of consciousness. 15
Not only this, but also this notion is neither equals with non (un)-consciousness (in the Freudian sense) nor its other (say, positive) side; because Freud’s unconsciousness like consciousness has objects and mental acts; then like that, it is representative and thus could be intentional.16 He confirms that “all the categories which we employ to describe conscious mental acts … can be applied” to unconscious mental acts.17 and in this perspective, he seems to have uncritically accepted the core of Cartesian view, especially when he writes that consciousness is a quality of mental states.18
3.3 The Self and the Presential cognition
Sadra does not believe that in the order of being there is an interruption between the self and the presential cognition. 19 In this respect Sadra writes:
“Every body who is conscious of himself necessarily is that consciousness of himself and this consciousness is currently continuously the self for ever.” 20
Demonstrating this thesis, he concludes that the reality of the self is
“[H]is existence, and his consciousness of his individual (shakhsi) existence is realised only by presence of this existence.”21
The self and the presential cognition are separating from each other only metaphorically, as when we introduce the notion of the self “behind” such a consciousness.22 The presential cognition which is a factual experience of and an pre-ontological presence before Being consists of the being of the self; in other words, it is the self simply because it is, indeed, the experience of no-self (self in its subjectivistic sense) or, to use a mystical term, of “emptiness”(fana)23 since the presential cognition has no object; or say as Hegel holds in sense certainty, the subject and the object are one and the same. Sadra says:
“It is concluded that in this kind of consciousness (‘ilm) what . . . really exist in itself is one and the same.” 24
This is because the essential nature of the presential cognition is that the reality of this existential consciousness and that of the self are existentially one and the same. In other words, since the emanative (which grounds the “being” of the self) and absorbed (which grounds the presential cognition) dimensions of the self are two expression of one and the same truth, then, there is no object (in the ordinary, subjectivistic sense) in experiencing the being of the self; that is because there is no duality in this stage at all, and that there is no room for speaking of object or subject; there is only a presential cognition that is the being of the self simply because it is actually pure existence. This means that the presential cognition has all its relations within itself without any implication of supposing an objective reference (in the subjectivistic sense) and then it will never be wrong or false. This latter point is to be understood on the basis of two principles of transcendent philosophy:
a) Principle of primordiality and unity of Being as such: since Being as such, Sadra says in a Heideggerian tone, is existentially really unique truth; and that the presential cognition is a manifested mode of that Being, it is then concluded that the presential cognition is true. Its truth however is existential, not logical (in the technical sense), and it is ontological not epistemological. If so, it is not then subject to the logical dichotomy of truth-falsehood.
b) That wrongness or falsehood can be supposed where there is an object. Now, as we have said, in the case of the presential cognition we have neither object, nor subject, so this distinction does not apply here. 25
Hence we may conclude that the presential cognition is not a phenomenal act, whether they may be sense-perceptions, or psychological states of mind. It is because the presential cognition, as we have already said, is “my” existence insofar as I existentially experience it; and it is the unique context for phenomenal acts, perception as well as psychological states of mind. In fact, Sadra says that it is the presential cognition that creates them through its disjunctive imaginary exemplifications; it is their upsurge.26 They are functional aspects of the presential cognition but the presential cognition can not be identified by only one of them, just as it can not be identified by a collection of them. 27 The presential cognition is them and more than them; simply because it is the “being” of the self. 28
Understood as such, the above characteristic of the presential cognition seems to place it, if not opposite to, then behind and in the ground of the Cartesian Cogito, the Husserlian constituting (eidetic) consciousness, the Humean psychological “I” and linguistic approaches to the self29 that are “intentional” or reflective; whereas the presential cognition basically covers the hidden existential ground of them. Principally it is an existential experience of no-mind and cannot be simply a collection of actions or be somehow known through its phenomenal acts.
In such a discussion, Sadra may again be regarded as a forerunner of existential phenomenologists, in rejection of the subjectivistic notion of consciousness and the transcendental self. 30 Just as in Heidegger and Sartre, 31 we have already found in Sadra that both notions of “consciousness” and “self” fell with the denial of the transcendental subject, as we found in Kant, Hegel, and Husserl (all coming after Descartes) that the affirmation of the cogito was at the same time an affirmation of both the existence of consciousness and the self. A comparison between Sadra and Sartre here may make the case more clear.32 Sartre, in particular, takes the existence of consciousness as his beginning. His denial of the transcendental self is not a denial of consciousness or existential self, which, like Sadra he seems to identify as “for-itself”. This consciousness seems to be for Sartre, as for Sadra, existential and an openly performative practical experience. For both of them, the acts of consciousness provide us with a describable starting point; there are no acts of an “underlying” or transcendental self. Consciousness is analysed not as a knowing consciousness or as a primarily reflecting consciousness, but rather as an active, “living” consciousness. While the Sadraean thesis rejects Descartes’, Kant’s, and Husserl’s theory which takes thinking and knowing as the essential conscious acts, it somehow agrees with Sartrean position that consciousness is first of all a perceiving, feeling, mobile consciousness. Consciousness is first of all a practical, “non-reflective” consciousness. As already indicated, the presential cognition is, according to Sadra “pre-ontological”, meaning that it is existentially, primordially, a factually lived experience. In a more or less the same manner, we may see a similar tone in Heidegger and Sartre. For Heidegger and Sartre, practical or “ontic” acts are more “primitive” or “original” than acts of “ontological” cognition. In Sadra, this insistence on precognitive intentional performative experience, i.e., the presential cognition is carried through consistently and persuasively; in his analysis, the traditional dualisms between mind and body, subject and object are discarded in favour of the notion of being-present-before-Being– a notion which sounds like the Heideggerian conception of “being-in-the-world”.
In the light of the above remark, it may easily be seen that the “intentionality” which is the crucially central keystone in Husserlian eidetic consciousness has no place in the Sadraean pre-ontological presential cognition, simply because the latter belongs to the order of being in which the presential cognition, the experience of Being, genetically existentially acts, rather that intends in a way that bears a subjectivistic tone. The Husserlian concept of “intentionality”, if has any meaning for Sadra at all, should be, in agreement with Sartre, stripped of its Husserlian heavily cognitive connotations and become equivalent to the concept of “mobility”. The self, according to Sadra, is conscious, not of his being, but through his being. This is why he says that the presential cognition is an existential building up of the being of the self; a currently continuously process of going ahead toward perfection (sayrorat ila al kamal). The paradigm of an intentional act, then, in agreement with Sartre, is not “I think” or “I know,” but “I can.”
However, like Sartre who believe that the existential consciousness is dependent by its nature,33 Sadra also goes on, as already seen, to say that consciousness is absolutely nothing apart from its source, i.e., Being, and it always remains dependent, “unfulfilled”, and “incomplete” (in Sartre’s word: “decompression of Being”). This leads Sadra to maintain, with Heidegger, Sartre and post-Heideggerians like Rorty, Derrida and Foucault, 34 that the existential consciousness can have no “contents” 35 and can have no independent existence, no existence apart from Being. It would further follow that there can be no intelligible thesis of idealism, which relies on its dependency. With this analysis, the traditional notion of subject (in Cartesian-Husserlian sense) is altered radically. There is no subject or self “in” or “behind” consciousness; the self, as already hinted, is simply the presential cognition itself: Self is not relative to experience as we may see in subjectivistic approaches; rather, it is this experience. Consciousness, being an existential experience, is no longer the subject in Kant’s meaning of the term. It is subjectivity itself or in Sartre’s words, the immanence of self in self.
There is further room here to compare Sadra with Sartre. As often mentioned, the presential cognition should be regarded as an existential experience. We would underline the word “experience” here. The word “experience” here indicates, for Sadra, a creative relation to Being which puts the self in absorption. Therefore, it does not mean, in superficial positivistic sense, the scientific experience. Rather, it is a purely existential experience for Sadra. Such an experience, according to Sadra, is the hermeneutic content of mysticism (‘irfan). However, since it is the being of the self, we, even being non-mystics, also live with a special degree of such an experience. It is the root of all aspects of our acts. Now if we take the word “perception” in its existential sense as seemingly used so by Sartre and Merleau-Ponty who maintain that it is the content of phenomenology, we may, then, find more similarity here. In a similar manner, Sadraean “experience” and Sartrean “perception” need not be analysed as a primarily cognitive notion (as we find in Husserl). Such an existential experience and perception may be viewed more broadly as the general relations of consciousness and Being or as the original relation of consciousness to being. Accordingly both Sartre and Sadra take such an existential perception and experience as the nature of consciousness. For both Sadra and Sartre such an experience and perception is to be analysed as “primitive”. In this case, both also begin with the doctrine that the existence of consciousness itself is known simply by virtue of its existence. What Sartre and Sadra concur over this latter doctrine is that self-knowledge (in its subjectivistic sense) is not the defining characteristic of the existential consciousness, for it ignores the “non-reflective consciousness” or “preconscious intentionality”. It may be said from this perspective that Cartesian cogito is true and necessary only on a reflective, articulate “level” of that existential experience or perception. The definition of “consciousness” thus focuses on this– that is, its always being existentially an experience inside Being. According to these authors, consciousness, it seems, is this existentially factual experience; it is not an object itself or an object for itself. Sadra determined this by insisting that the truth of this experience can never be accessible for reflective thought; then it is, to use a mystical term, “empty” for the reflective thought. Sartre also points out that this consciousness is “nothing”.
The Sadraean thesis provides him with another idiom which we can call “pre-ontological touch”, and by which he was able to say that the transcendent self in his process of experiencing Being is at home with the reality of beings and can then grasp their existential truths. One can say, on this perspective, that Sadra may have maintained that the existential experience of the unitary consciousness has a twofold task: to be the experience of its very being as well as of the beings at the same time. Though the unitary consciousness is by its transcendent nature as a self is, in Sadra’s term, being-for-the other (i.e., Being which is in-itself), that is, it has no independent being apart from its special, dependent being, however, the presential cognition is “being-for-itself” (al wojood li nafs) 36 in the sense that it is presence-before-Being and experiences both its being and the other being with which it is in pre-ontological contact. If so, we may see a similarity in Sartre: Though the twofold task of Sadraea presential cognition may seem different in nature from Sartrean task of consciousness, some similarities may, however, come in force here. Sartre arrives at a distinction between two very different kinds of Being: the being of objects for consciousness (beings-in-themselves) and the being of consciousness (being-for-itself). Consciousness is dependent, for Sartre, on its objects just as for Sadra it depends on Being for its own existence. To avoid any postulation of consciousness as an object of some sort distinct from its objects, Sartre introduces a convention of parenthesising the (of) in the expression “consciousness (of).” This locution is similar to Sadra’s characterization of “being present before Being” (or in Heideggerian term “being-in-the-world”) In both cases, the point of the linguistic innovation is to prevent us from separating different components of the expression, specifically, from attempting to logically distinguish consciousness (or the transcendent self) from its objects (Being). “Consciousness (of) objects” is thus to be taken as a primitive for Sartre just as presence before Being, the presential cognition is a primitive for Sadra. Both expressions carry enormous philosophical thrust, for they are basic rejections of Husserl’s basic distinctions between cogito and cogitation, noetic act and noema, subject and object. On the basis of this characterization of consciousness as an existential experience or perception, in a more or less similar way, these authors recharacterise the sense in which this existential consciousness which is being-for-itself, is self-knowing (in Sadra’s words ma’refateh al-nafs). The existential consciousness is essentially aware of itself as well as the other beings with which it is, holds Sadra, in a pre-ontological contact.37 According to both Sadra and Sartre, this is even a necessary “ontological” (pre-ontological) feature of consciousness. It is not, then, to be confused with the reflectivity of the Cartesian cogito. There is no self (in subjectivistic sense) in this existential consciousness, and all of this is still non-reflective. The cogito is based on reflective thought-experiment. Consciousness can then be characterized as “being-for-itself” (in Sadra: al wojood li nafseh)because its existence consists in its dependency on objects (Being for Sadra), its non-reflective knowledge of its own dependency on objects, and the possibility of explicit recognition of itself in the Cartesian cogito.
Much of the characterization of being-for-itself (al wojood li nafseh), however, must be made in contrast to Being-in-itself (al wojood fi zateh). The key to the distinction between the two kinds of being is, says Sadra in a Sartrean tone, the centrally important recognition that Being-for-itself can never be dependent on any thing except itself; that is to say, its being comes from within itself not from without; in Heideggerian words it is groundless; rather it is the ground of the beings; whereas the being-for the other, the transcendent self as the presential cognition is absolutely dependent on Being (the objects for Sartre).
Though the above comparison shows the similarities between Sartre and Sadra, it must not however be taken that the aim or nature of their discussion are simply one and the same. While Sadra intends to grasp a theory to uncover all implicit, tacit knowledge (Ma’rifah) from a commonsensical everydayness to the higher mystical apprehension, from the naive sensual intuition to a huge invisible kernel, Sartre avoids any involvement in the invisible field and mystical apprehension. Moreover, while Sadra, following the transcendent mystics, in suggesting the presential cognition as an existentially current experience, avoids any subjectivistic idiom in this particular case (when for example he speaks of the experience of non-self (fana-o-zzat), considering it as “emptiness” (‘adam), Sartre who strains to follow Husserl in his analysis of consciousness, constantly falls back into traditional subject-object language; this may easily be seen in his division of consciousness in two kinds, one of which is the object for the other. Although he intends to support Heidegger in his rejection of Cartesians, the dualism between consciousness and one’s own body is never rejected, even though he insists that one’s body is not simply “another object.” In spite of his rejection of Husserl’s transcendental ego and his epoche, Sartre seems to not succeed in ridding himself of those Cartesian elements which he most needs to reject according to his own methodology.
3.4. The Presential cognition and Temporality
The above description of Sadraean transcendent theory signifies that something exists in us before our personal history; to say that one bears the presential cognition in himself is to affirm that he depends neither on his personal history nor on the world (of objects); he would be dependent only if he had to acquire what he already possesses. Therefore, so far as he possesses this presential cognition, he is unengenderable, because it is an existentially current experience — as we have already hinted. Therefore, he is always already there. Of course, he is born, but the upsurge of the for-itself (li nafseh) a being capable of revealing Being to itself is not merely a historical event. The presential cognition is, according to Sadra, non-temporal. Considered from this standpoint, history then arises from a non-historical ground, from a beginning which inaugurates time.
In one form or another, this idea has some relatives in modern philosophy. Even in Kant we might find a certain support for it. It seems to be like the a priori which for Kant is non-temporal, as it represents a system of logical conditions. But in addition to the transcendental subject Kant maintains the idea of the thing-in-itself, not only in order to combat the temptation of idealism, but also to designate the moral subject who acts according to an intelligible causality. For the Kantian subject is also a moral agent, and reason is also practical reason. This moral subject is no longer purely logical as free actions insert themselves into the temporal web, and the kingdom of ends to which he belongs must be attained within history. Now this subject is not wholly temporal because his free actions are absolute beginnings.
We can also find a relationship to Sartre whose existentialism is both a genetic theory of personality and a search for a fundamental element for the personality. He sees the finally irreducible element in man to be an “original project” in which the for-self determines its being and by which it unifies itself freely.38 Having all the unpredictability of a free act and being, both completely contingent and irreducible, this “original choice of our being” is really pre-temporal or non-temporal. Sartre attributes this choice to freedom and attempts to guarantee its non-substantiality by saying that “the structure [constituted by this choice] can be called the truth of freedom.” 39 He introduces the notion of person here:
“[freedom] is not to be distinguished from the choice of freedom; that is, from the person himself.” 40
True, if we present Sartre’s position to Sadra, he sees instead that the person (or man: insan), considered as subject, is given to himself during his existential presence; and he would not designate a specific given in this action. This is because the subject has a primordial existence: he is affected by a contingency which, one may say, is not necessarily the mark of freedom. Nevertheless, whether the subject is responsible (in Sartrean sense) or not, what we would see is that, according to Sadraean transcendent philosophy, the subject is rooted in the non-temporal — even though he manifests and realizes himself only in time.
The non-temporal is the presential cognition which is the ground of the subject. It can, however, be the principle of an individual history to the extent that it actualises itself or merely tends to actualise itself. All genesis or authentic development which is not simple repetition is, according to Sadra, 41 an actualisation of the presential cognition, as we have already seen. Though a condition of history, the presential cognition in itself is nevertheless not historical for Sadra simply because it is being and being is not temporal for him; only the circumstances of its actualisation are — so far as the presential cognition is born in and with the individual (fard). This has the paradoxical implication that the presential cognition has no birth date, since birth, in any case, has a date only so far as events are dated in relation to it or so far as it too is considered as an event in the world. The presential cognition is the principle of genesis, not its effect. And, as imbued with and grounded by it, the subject is unengenderable.
To the extent that it concerns what is foreign or prior to facts, the presential cognition does not have to be submitted to a factual test, simply because every test will be supplied by it through its living and current experience. Yet it calls for facts in two ways. First, it does not discredit a genetic theory; the priority of the presential cognition, as we have already seen, is not only logical, but also real and existential. This is why the presential cognition retains its autonomy by appearing as an origin, as a beginning which has no beginning: the existential and thus non-temporal priority of the presential cognition expressed in the temporal order as a radical priority.
However, from a subjective standpoint, one may say that the presential cognition also has a logical priority. The benefit of this priority seems to express its absolute character and to translate it into the language of temporality by such an expression as “always already there.” It is this “always already there” that a genetic theory may bring to light: by showing how the presential cognition is actualised, such a theory manifests the primordial character of the presential cognition. As we have seen, by his method of ontetic reduction, Sadra detected the presential cognition (the self) as being always already known.
More generally speaking, a genetic theory of the self (Sadra uses: takwin and sayrurah of nafs) 42 on the basis of the presential cognition can show how an individual (fard) has been open to certain meaning or values, and closed to others: It is dependent on being in ontetic touch with them in the order of being. Since his childhood, one may be defined by a certain character of the presential cognition which it conceals and which, taken as a whole, form what we may call, to borrow a phrase from existentialists, his existential a priori. This means that the presential cognition is actualised only if it belongs to a performative self who currently experiences. A performative self is that who is born and possesses an existential nature. This nature is constituted through that process of current experience, through the accomplishment of the presential cognition.
The presential cognition in fact signifies what is not known at first, what I know only afterwards when I say: I already knew it or I have always known it. In fact, the presential cognition, as we have seen, is the presence of the self to self: in Bergsonian terms, the immanence of the past in the present. The presential cognition is what I am because I am essentially my current experience of my being in the presence of Being; this determines the meaning of my being in the present. Thus, from the transcendent point of view, the presential cognition must be understood in reference to being rather than in relation to knowing. Knowledge may also be referred to, if it is defined not as a process of aiming at, but as one of coinciding with: if, says Sadra, it is a manner of being and not a manner of acting or of preparing for action by elaborating of concepts. In this sense, knowledge is nothing other than presence to self.
Moreover, the transcendent theory of the presential cognition implies that our existential current experience of Being always has a partly actualised aspect and a partly non-actualised aspect (because it is a being-toward-its perfection [al-mawjud al-talib li al-kamal]). To actualise the latter is to realize, in another perspective, what Kant took to be impossible: a non-objectifying knowledge of the self. And it seems to combine two very different senses of self-relation; the relation to oneself as negation of the self, thus as the emptiness (fana) which defines the presential cognition for Sadra, and the relation to oneself as presence to self, hence as the plenitude which defines self-knowledge for him.
In the following chapter, I will continue to expose other side of the ontetic structure of the self: the body.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Self and the Body
In the previous chapter, I suggested that the self in its ontetic state would be understood in terms of the presential cognition. In this chapter I would continue to reconstruct Sadra’s idea of the body in the context of this suggestion. The main aim of this chapter is, then, an exposition of the relation between the ontetic self and the body, between the presential cognition and corporeality. I will end this chapter by a discussion on mental causation that is vital for contemporary philosophy of mind.
4.1. Primary Considerations
One of the interesting aspect of Sadraean doctrine, as I see, is that he seems to detect the body in the presential cognition, and not simply to join one to the other in Cartesian fashion. Since we have confined ourselves in present research to depict the scope of the presential cognition so far as it equals the “being” of the self in the transcendent perspective, it will be important to revise how Sadra defines the body as the other side of the presential cognition and thereby integrates the self and its body as an ontetic unit.
In fact, our consciousness of our body, according to Sadraean transcendent philosophy is not conceptual and representative. Nor is that all however: In the light of his discussion on the body-self relationship, Sadra goes far beyond traditional general positions. In fact, transcendent philosophy in this version presents us a theory to remove, in the ontetic field, the dualism of body-self in the light of Sadraean theory of Being1 to accord with our everyday experience and to remove the ancient Platonic explanation of the relation between the self and the body which is embodied as a relation between a driver and the chariot he steers. Plato thought that the self is a substance free from matter and exists in a supernatural world. Later, it descends to the body in order to steer it and manage it. It is clear that Plato’s explanation of this pure dualism that separates the self and the body cannot explain the close relation between them that makes every human being feel that he is one, and not two things that come from two different worlds and then met. The platonic explanation remains incapable of solving the problem, in spite of the revision made in it by Aristotle who introduced the idea of “form” and “matter”– a revision that influenced philosophical selves after him during the medieval period.
In post-medieval philosophical discussion of the self-body problem, the central figure is Descartes whose well-known dualism of res cogitans- res extensa (Cartesian dualism) (positively and negatively) formed the major attitudes in modern philosophy.2 For a Cartesian dualist the self and body are both substances, but while the body is an extended, and so a material, substance, the self is an unextended, or spiritual, substance, subject to completely different principles of operation from the body. It was this doctrine that Gilbert Ryle caricatured as the myth of the ghost in the machine. Ryle suggests that the distinction between self and body does not indicate two kinds of entity, but the ways of describing creatures with psychological abilities. “These expressions do not indicate two different species of existence…they indicate two senses of ‘exist’.” 3
Dualist theories are also to be found in a more sceptical form, which may be called “bundle dualism”. The word “bundle” springs from Hume’s insistence that when he turned his mental gaze upon his own self, he could discern no unitary substance but simply a bundle of perceptions. (see Ch.1) Hume thought of such a bundle as non-physical. A bundle dualist is one who dissolves the self in this general way, while leaving the body and other material things intact.
Besides dividing dualism into Cartesian and bundle theories, one may also divide it according to a different principle. “Interactionalist” theories hold what common sense asserts, that the body can act upon the self and self can act upon the body. For “parallelist” theories, however, self and body are incapable of acting upon each other. Every event occurring in one of them is accompanied by a parallel event in the other (like two synchronized clocks). This necessary accompaniment between mental events and bodily events does not mean that either of them is a cause of the other. The mutual influence between a material being and an immaterial being, according to parallelism, makes no sense. Rather, this necessary accompaniment between these two kinds of event is due to the divine providence that has willed the sensation of, for example, hunger always to be accompanied by the movement of the hand for reaching the food, without this sensation being a cause of this movement. It is clear that this theory is new explanation of the Platonic dualism which separates the self and the body. There is also an intermediate view, especially when combined with a bundle theory of self, that is called the doctrine of “epiphenomenalism”. This view tries to cognise the independent reality of the mental while approving the controlling role of the brain in the mental life. The contemporary analytical philosophy of mind that itself within the frame of physicals, and we find in it numerous theories on self-body: reductionism4, behaviourism5, functionalism, 6 and emergentism, 7 along with their wide sub-branches, are the most important strands in this tradition. As one may easily depict, these conflicting theories, after refutation of Cartesian “official doctrine”, all follow a liner evolution within a physicalistic frame.
Mentalist theories arise naturally out of dualistic theories, particularly where the dualistic position is combined with Descartes’ own view that the self is more immediately and certainly known than anything material. If this view is taken, it is natural to begin by becoming sceptical of the existence of the material things (remember Berkeley).
Though it is usually accepted that Cartesian dualism (res cogitans- res extensa) logically ends up in the deadlock of mentalism, Descartes’ own particular form of the theory, however, seems to have still a bit of room to avoid such a radical subsequence. Through his Meditations, he tries to attest a “substantial union” between body and self through nature:
“Nature teaches me nothing more expressly or clearly than the fact that I have a body, that this body feels out of sorts when I am in a bad mood, and that it needs food or drink when I feel hungry or thirsty…” 8
This voice of nature is feeling, the experience of obscure and confused qualities; it has to be guaranteed by divine truth and appear as the voice of God. Yet what Descartes discovers in the Cogito is a reason for the union, not, as we see in Sadra, its being. The union needs a justifying reason because, even if it is directly experienced, it is not immediately clear to reflection: for reflective knowledge, the self is really distinct from the body, since it is an autonomous substance. This precludes interpreting the union as a unity (as Aristotle thought) or as an identity (as Spinoza maintained); it can only be a conjunction. Descartes does, however, make as much progress toward unification of the two substances as is possible. He recognizes that the self is compromised by the body; feelings are not the thoughts of a self distinct from the body, and the body in its turn is structured by the self: its functional indivisibility results from its union with the self. Apart from this union, the body exists as a mere collection of mechanical parts without a nature of its own; such a machine gains purposiveness only when the self bestow finality upon it, and
“[T]urns a purely mechanical assemblage into a whole, teleologically related to all of the body.” 9
As a result, the body is both divisible and indivisible; if on the one hand it participates in the indivisibility of the self, on the other hand the indivisible self participates in extension without being itself an extended substance. In sum, Descartes accurately describes the effects of the union of body and self, but he admits that this union is unintelligible in itself — an unintelligibility that provides a reason to celebrate God for having created this union, and to exonerate Him for having made man fallible.
4.2. Sadra’s Theory of the Body
From our discussions on Sadraean theory of the self, it may be clear that the self is nothing more than a presential cognition that ontologically emerges. Sadra holds, and demonstrates that, ontologically speaking, the self is a simple immaterial substance which emerges along/with the body so that it becomes “the first entelechy (perfection) of the body”. 10 The human reality is initially revealed and shaped as a totally corporeal entity. There is one being which passes through various stages of perfection, and in every stage it exhibits unique behavioural patterns appropriate to that stage.11 This indicates the corporeal origin of the self. This by no means, however, indicates that the self is considered as a quality of the body (as we see in type physicalism). On the contrary, to Sadra, the self is a substance which is immaterial in essence while material in performance. This means for Sadra that all biological and intellectual functions of human organism are nothing but outward manifestations of a single and simple reality. This is what Sadra expresses by the following principle: 12
[Physical Emergentism] The self bodily emerges in its origin but remains spiritual in its survival.
This principle implies three interrelated principles:
First it indicates that there is a self-body attachment or dependence:
[Self-body dependence] The self depends on the body in its identity and generation but not in its substance.
This principle indicates that the mental forms can not be emerged regardless of physical conditions and occasions, but this dependence is not happily viewed as causal; namely, it is not as if the mental is brought about by the physical.
Second, it indicates that there is a special kind of change through which the self emerges:
[Substantial change] The self emerges on the body through a substantial movement which is in its turn ontetic and existential.
On this principle which is in its turn based on Sadraean specific theory of Being, from one hand, and a reformulation of the principle of potency-act in the traditional metaphysics, from other hand, the self comes into being in the form of bodily existence and then through its substantial motion it passes through physical stages towards its refined nature. It is not the case that the self comes to the body from outside; rather, the very reality of the self, as Sadra saw it emerges on the material body at the beginning of its temporal course; and then the actualisation of the physical reality under the principle of Substantial change ends in the spiritual stage. In other words, human existence changes and develops by itself and this change is from the less instance to more instance; this change and movement constitutes the entity of the self, and because of this developmental motion, new possibilities open up.
The same principle demands that, since the self emerges on the basis of matter it can not be absolutely material, for ‘emergence’ requires that the emergent be of a higher level than that which it emerges out of or on the basis of; and then the identity of the body is due to the self which is its final form. This idea is accomplished in the following principle:
[The irreducibility of the emergent self] The emergent self (including its forms, events and processes) is irreducible to and unpredictable from the lower-level matter from which it emerges.
These principles all indicate that the natural phase of the existence of the self begins with a physical nature. Sadra writes:
“The truth is that the human self is physical in its temporal occurrence and participation, whereas it is spiritual in its subsistence and intellection; that it is spiritual in its participation in the material world, it is corporeal, while by its intellection of its own essence and of the essence of its cause, it remains spiritual.” 13
In this manner the traditional dualism of human nature tends in Sadraean approach to a unity. Man, instead of being a composite of body and self, is considered as a single and simple reality which comes into being in a body and gradually becomes transformed into its spiritual substance, as if the body of man were a catalyst by which the physical reality ascends to the spiritual:
“It is evident that the human form is the ultimate stage of the physical reality as well as the initial stage of the spiritual reality”. 14
The Substantial change of the self from a bodily genesis to a spiritual entity leads to the total actualisation of the rational faculty which is just a potentiality in the primitive stages of the development of the self, that is, when the self has not yet cast away its vegetable and animal shells. The self is inner force behind all the developmental processes; it is in its vegetable stage when man is still a fertilized cell; then it passes through animal kingdom, which in turn culminates in the initial stage of manhood, wherein the rational faculty is about to achieve actualisation. Thus, the intellect becomes manifest after the full realization of the sense organs and the internal faculties like perception, memory and the others. 15
The self has its being as a continuous reality at all these levels and at each of these levels it is the same in sense and yet different in a sense because, as the hierarchic doctrine of existence demands, the same being can pass through different levels of development. 16 So considered, the self becomes purified and realised its actualities as it is existentially provided with variety of faculties and powers. Faculties are the ‘modes’ or ‘manifestations’ of the self. It is one of the novel aspects of Sadra’s theory of the self that he attributes the quality of having powers, organs and faculties to the self and not to the physical body which makes the self a function of the body. Sadra expresses this position as the following principle:
[Mental Faculties] The self in its own unity is all of the faculties. 17
This celebrated position is indeed a radical departure from the cardinal approaches in classic as well as contemporary philosophy of mind. Sadra claims that this interpretation of the self removes the difficulties experienced by the definition of the self; further, it raises the self from the status of a purely physical form to a form which, although in matter, is capable of transcending it, for the extent of its immanence in matter is less than that of a simple physical form. This position frankly corresponds with the principles of physical emergentism and Substantial change. Indeed, when the self which is an existential unity in all experience achieves its highest form through its Substantial change, it contains all the lower faculties and forms within its simple nature. This idea leads Sadra to a further interesting principle:
[The principle of Mental creativity] The self has a supra-power to create by and in itself all perceptible forms.18
The self, although generated with/in the body, is not of the body; but something higher than it, and employs bodily functions. As for sense perception, its subject is also the self, not the sense organs. Physical organs are required for sense perception but only thanks to the accidental fact that we exist in a material world. The reason for this is that the external sensible and the affections of the sense organ are merely preparatory and provide the ‘occasions’ for the creation of the perceptible forms in and by itself from within.
This is because the self is provided with such faculties by its ontetic Substantial movements. So, in the case of audition, for example, it is not the case that the external sound produces a movement in the air which is exactly transmitted through successive air waves to the interior of the ear and thus hearing takes place. The movement of the air and its air-waves are preparatory conditions for the sound to be heard, but they do not transmit the sound.
This idea is supported by Sadra’s doctrine of the identity of the subject and object in knowledge on the basis of which knowledge in general is interpreted in terms of existence; this doctrine indicates that knowledge in general, including perceptive and imaginative, can not be merely interpreted in terms of abstraction; it is not the case that the self abstracts forms from mater or material attachments.
Based on (and relying on) these principles and ideas, we may expand Sadraean doctrine to see if it has more to tell us. It is because we interpreted Sadraean doctrine of the self in the light of his theory of presential knowledge. This means that Sadra conceives the self as the idea of a real integrated being, lived in diverse experiences, though without these experiences being able to introduce a principle of dissociation into this integration. When the vicissitudes of this integration– e.g., the self acting on the body and vice versa, or the self trying to cut itself loose from the body — are invoked to illustrate fully lived experiences, they are usually of the order of the “as if” because they presuppose dualism. Of course, Sadra speaks of the self: certain moral, theological and mystical codes push him to; however in using a term such as this, he seems to abstract from his theory only to describe his conclusions and to make his theory understandable in his contemporary official philosophical language and terminology.
Taking the human reality in a Substantial dynamic movement (al-harakat al-juhariyyah) on the basis of his theory of Being, Sadra sees that the body in its sustantival movement pursues the completion of its existence and continues its completion (kamal), until it is free from its materiality, and becomes, under specific conditions, an immaterial being. In the case of human being, this leads to what is called the “human soul” or “self”. 19 In spite of the fact that the self is not material, it has a material source in body. For Sadra, the self is not only connected with the body, but is itself nothing but a material made superior by the existential movement. This does not, however, mean for him that the self is a product of the body and one of its effects. It is a product of the existential movement which does not proceed from matter itself. By this meaning he considers that the body is to be the “near side” of the unique reality appearing to us in our everyday experience. The “other side”, traditionally called self or self, generated by the ontetic purification of the body’s being, is the depth of that reality.
On the basis of Sadraean theory of body whenever I say “my body,” I prevent myself from considering it as any body whatsoever, as a Cartesian machine. And I should not think, either, of a body linked with a self, but of an animated body; nor of a self linked with a body, but of a corporeal self — as we find in Merleau-Ponty’s theory. According to Sadra this is because the body is the genetic origin of the self. At the beginning, there is only the body, says Sadra.20 Then, getting deepened through its existential kinetic movement, the body, like a flower, opens and its depth comes out and embraces its existentially genetic origin, i.e., the body, as foam. The self is depth of the body. In other words, according to Sadra, 21 the body and the self are two terms to describe two aspects of one and the same existentially unique reality at which we look from two different standpoints.
This will enforce what I mentioned above that Sadra seems to detect the body in the presential cognition, and not simply to join one to the other in Cartesian fashion. To do this task, Sadra detects body-consciousness as an existential mode of the presential cognition. 22 It appears from what Sadra tells us that I do not know my body, in its existential state, as an object; rather, I am aware of it as my “self”; I discover it in my presential cognition as my experience of my presence — my being. Sadra does not plan to find the body as if it were already there, existing independently of the self, and ready for a kind of pact with it. Then he does not deduce the body: either in the Cartesian sense of the word, according to which it is subordinated to consciousness both in the order of being and in the order of knowing (for if the body has a meaning it is to be always already there, thanks to causes, not our understandings), or in the Kantian sense of deduction, since the body is unjustifiable; it is neither a right nor a possession. According to Sadra, I do not possess a body, in the way that I own a cloth; instead, my presential cognition, my existential experience of my being teaches me that I am my body. I do say that I have bad eyes as I say that I have a stomach ache; but in holding my body at a distance in this manner, I affirm that I am more than a body, not that I am not a body. We must, then, find the body in the presential cognition, and conceive of the presential cognition as a body.
Sadra starts from this fact that the presential cognition bears witness to the body by the very fact that the body is present to it. At first, the presential cognition is existentially conscious of body. In this level, for Sadra there is not a question of the body-as-subject: we are on the plane of the presential cognition, not of reflective knowledge. Sadra teaches that corporeality (rather than the multiple and divisible body) is immediately my first living experience in the plane of the presential cognition. A child, for example, becomes conscious of his entire body before exploring and recognizing the diversity of its parts: consciousness of the body is prior to the reflective distinction between external and internal perception, and does not result from a co-ordination or interpretation of sensation. The body is given as a primary unity which is the expression of a corporeal being, not as the result of a synthesis or as the conclusion of a judgment of finality. 23
In elaborating this identity, Sadra begins with the presential cognition, and first discovers the self within it. 24 We have already seen this when we discussed his doctrine that the presential cognition implies the “being” of the self, and that only the self absorbed in and presented before Being can become a presential cognition. Now so far as he wants to take body-consciousness as the presential cognition, it seems, Sadra tries to verify it in another way. In the following discussion we try to bring out his hidden and sophisticated argument in comparison with modern trends when applicable to make clear what he may want to say.
We can put this another way, and see it as an answer to this question: Why is the Cogito in the first person? It is evident that when I say “I think,” I am abstracting, in Sadraean manner, from my presential cognition. It transfers us from the order of being to the order of concept, from the ontetic field to the eidetic field. What then the “I” signifies is that this “I think” implies a presential cognition which is self-consciousness: when I say “I think”, I think that I think. This consciousness exists for the self as a presence to self. However, the self may not be interpreted here as a verbal or logical condition for the presential cognition, and then, on this basis as the condition, for the objectivity of my representations. Rather, we have seen that the transcendent theories of Sadra avoid interpreting the self in this way. The self, as Sadra argues, has another kind of being: a non-formal and non-logical being which is also non-substantial. This being, Sadra already said, is like that belonging to a pure relation or preposition. Never being reflective, this being is an existential experience of no-self: “the pure annihilating movement of reflection,” as Sartre says, who with Sadra maintains that the presential cognition makes itself realised through this movement.
For Sadra, self-consciousness implies a relation, which is a presence, to the self, and a presential cognition. The presential cognition manifests its interiority in this relation, for it turns back onto itself only insofar as it is turned toward Being in the process of its existential experience; It is self-consciousness as the presential cognition. It is also a consciousness of self as self, so that the self, the presential cognition, performs a double function here: as the pronoun of consciousness and as a pronominal absolute. Actually, from Sadraean perspective, at the level of the presential cognition and the pre-reflective cogito, there is no self-knowledge transforming the self into a known object, only an allusion to the self that can later be made explicit by underlining the pronoun “I”. Hence the self is no longer consciousness of itself or its movement in this reflective sense, but the presential cognition affecting this movement. It is, in this sense, “empty” (fani). In such a process there is no symmetrical intentionality, as we see in reflective knowledge, belonging to that which intends the object, for the presential cognition does not intend or posit the subject; it experiences and lives it. The presential cognition is not so present to Being that it is not at the same time conscious that this presence is its own presence. The “I” is thus immanent in the presential cognition. For Sadra, the self in its non-subjectivistic sense cannot be an illusion, since it is immediately present to itself. Nor is it — like the Kantian “I think”– a simple character of successive psychological or logical consciousness, since it is given as a self which is the presential cognition, and as an active principle that makes the experience of Being possible. The self is the presential cognition which experiences Being. According to Sadra, to be conscious does not signify that one has consciousness like a possession. To be conscious is not to possess a quality, but to perform an act. The presential cognition is the act and performance rather than the possession of the subject — and act and performance determines his being.
This presential cognition is active, and therefore ascertained and realised. When Sadra asserts that “I” can exist only in an individual self and that the experiencing individual is given in all existential experience, he pursues his analysis of the presential cognition yet further. In fact, the self that is the presential cognition which achieves its fundamental selfhood (as with some reservations, Sartre would also say), is a singular self. In every experience, the presential cognition is unique and irreplaceable. If the Cartesian sum, one may then say, accompanies even the pre-reflective Cogito, this is because the self posits itself as an absolute by force of its presential cognition.
Taken thus, the self in the sense of the presential cognition is not the object of observations and inductions which belong to the eidetic field. In other words, to the extent that it does not give rise to a reflection — which always risks impurity — conferring properties and prerogatives on it, this self can claim neither the being of an object nor that of a subject which would somehow remain motionless in its being as the presential cognition. It has only the precarious and absolute being of the presential cognition. This being, however, seems from a reflective point of view, as non-being or empty simply because it is not accessible for the reflective knowledge. The presential cognition denies itself as an in-itself precisely because it is in-itself in spite of itself, or at least because it is always menaced by the in-itself as if by its own shadow. In fact, Sadra specifies that if the presential cognition is negation, it is not only the indeterminate negation of the self in general, but the determinate negation of a determinate in-itself, i.e., of a particular (juz’i) self. In refusing its particularity (juz’ iyyat), the presential cognition admits that it is particular; it has to have a certain perspective, a certain mode of being and a certain portion of existential experience of Being. This particularity is not at present made explicit by means of empirical, objective determinations; but it is expressed by a sort of experience of a living relation with a being that proposes or conceals itself, in the feeling of effort or relaxation and the like. When I say “I” before any reflection on this “I”, Sadra believes, I experience myself as someone, not as just anyone or as an abstract universal. My presence to Being or to beings with which I am in an ontetic touch is a singular presence, not an anonymous and neutral one, although it may imply different degrees of plenitude or depth — for example, according to whether I think conceptually or feel affectively. Now, the body, Sadra argues, constitutes this singularity (tashakhkhus) and provides this plenitude. We should not say that the body continually reselfs me of its presence, or that it supports or betrays me, embarrasses or stimulates me; for then I objectify it (though its very nature invites such objectification), and I substitute an artificial relation with my body for my spontaneous relation with Being. The body is not present to me as Being is, since it is my presence to Being; I am not conscious of my body as I am conscious oaf being with which I am in ontetic touch because I am my body. This is why Sadra speaks of the consciousness of the body as the “continuous” beginning stage of the presential cognition. Body-consciousness (or in Sartrean terms: “consciousness (of) body”) expresses the fact that the body is not an object for the presential cognition, but it is the presential cognition itself. By this manner, we see that Sadra has located the body in the presential cognition, though not as object; rather, as the presential cognition itself so far as it is singular (motashakhkhes). 25
We can easily see similarities between the path followed by Sadra and that followed by Sartre: 26 In a similar (but not necessarily the same) manner, Sartre also tries to take away any distinction between non-reflective consciousness and body. In this relation he says:
“[B]eing for itself must be wholly body or wholly consciousness; it cannot united with the body. “27
Sartre also points out the singularity of the for-itself when he recalls the Platonic doctrine according to which the body individualizes the self and represents “the individualization of my engagement in the world.” 28 But in coming into the world and becoming engaged in it, we are captured and compromised by it. The body is in fact, writes Sartre:
“[T]he in-itself which is surpassed by annihilating for-itself and which reprehends the for-itself in the very surpassing.” 29
However, taking Sartrean language, reapprehending the for-itself means from, a Sadraean standpoint, that the for-itself is also an in-itself; although not in the sense that man would be the God that is a being wholly and simultaneously for-itself and in-itself. Instead, the alliance between for-itself and in-itself is established on the plane of finitude and as if it were an imperfection. Sartre, however, insists on another aspect of the for-itself: its double contingency:
“[O]n the one hand, while it is necessary that I exist in the form of being-there, still it is altogether contingent that I exist in the first place, for I am not the foundation of my being; on the other hand, while it is necessary that I be engaged in this or that point of view, it is contingent that it should be precisely in one to the exclusion of others. We have called this twofold contingency embracing the necessity of the facticity of the for-itself.” 30
Therefore the body is the facticity of the for-itself, and this is of crucial importance.
Nevertheless, in spite of this, Sartre arrives at the body in two ways, both of which are expressly opposed to Descartes. The first consists in investigating the basic relation between the for-itself and the in-itself. The in-itself here is the world, not what I am myself; consequently, the body, even though not exterior to the subject, remains idealized to a certain extent; it “designates” my situation, it “is defined” as my contingency, it “represents” my individualization. All of these verbs express the ontological function of the body, not its being; Sartre says: “the body manifests my contingency . . . it is only this contingency.” 31
He then defines being in terms of function. Secondly, the study of the body is part of the study of the for-others. The for-itself is here opposed to the for-others, rather than to the in-itself and the for-others determines what is or is not in-itself. The body, then, is in-itself only for others, while by itself, forth consciousness that experiences it or rather is it, it is for-itself. The body ceases to appear as the object it is for others when I experience it, instead of thinking about it and assuming the perspective of others.
In spite of the similarities one may feel between Sartre and Sadra in this case, there remains one important distinction: Sartre does not tell us about the being of body; on the contrary, Sadra has fully discussed the being of the body. Though we would not fall in such a detailed discussion which is beyond our present research, we may however consider his discussion on the being of the body insofar as it is identical with the presential cognition. The self of self-consciousness designates, for Sadra, both the movement of the presential cognition and its nature; movement denying its nature as being accessible for reflective knowledge and yet affirming it in the very denial as the primordial and existential current experience of Being: displaying the non-being of a being. The body is, according to Sadra, both surpassed and posited in this process. But we must not think that it undergoes this treatment passively, as if the presential cognition is exterior to it. The body is surpassed and posited because it is identified with the presential cognition; this is the very nature. It is not surpassed by the presential cognition as if by its other simply because, Sadra affirms, the body-consciousness is the continuous beginning of the presential cognition. To put this in a comparative way, it surpasses itself by effecting the annihilating movement that Sartre attributes to the for-itself.
Here, Sadra presents a clarification of the seeming opposition of the presential cognition and body: he notices that we would ever remember the two orders or fields already mentioned one of which is of concept and the other is of being. When we are talking of the identity of the presential cognition and body-consciousness we are in the second order not in the first one. In the first order, because we reflectively distinguish between the body and the self we remain with the illusion of a dualism; but, in fact, it is not the case if we look from the second order on which the body is not only on trial with itself, but also with Being. Surpassing itself toward Being, Sadra holds, it exists only in acting, in a living existential experience — that is, in the presential cognition — and it becomes identified with, and as, the latter. The body, from this Sadraean standpoint, is here no longer an object, but an acting self, a performative “I”. On this, in all activity, the body is not experienced as a body, but as the presential cognition. This means for him that the body does not possess conceptual existence; it has the existence of the in-itself. The body is both for-itself and in-itself. This is why Sadra is led to say that “I am body” as the presential cognition, or my consciousness of my body is by presence. The fact that this body is part of my existential presence means for Sadra that it exists for the presential cognition; However, Sadra seems to hold that this does not prevent the body from being the presential cognition. For Sadra, the presential cognition and body are two perspectives on or two languages about one and the same reality.
The presential cognition, is, according to Sadra, a process; It is a living and current experience through which, and because I am a being-toward-perfection (al talib li al kamal), I am always the negation of what I am; this negation is entirely spontaneous, and is made explicit only when I reflect; I am my body on the condition of not being it, since I say “I”. Yet it occurs all the time, and, is my very existence.
By this line of reasoning, Sadra comes to an interesting conclusion: the for-itself (li nafseh) and the in-itself (fi nafseh) are not two modalities of being brought together and reconciled in me: I am a for-itself — i.e., both presence and opposition to myself — but not only in and through my relation with the in-itself, which is what I deny in myself and which yet is myself. It is this unity of the for-itself and in-itself in me that constitutes my being.
4.3 The Presential Cognition and Corporeality
The analysis of the presential cognition has already led to existentialise the self to form the idea of an ontetic self; yet we have not ventured beyond this point. For the body cannot be deduced. However, we can backtrack a little now to reconsider whether Sadra’s transcendent theory implies the immanence of the body in the self as ontetic. According to Sadra, the presence of the body endows the self with a nature and characterizes it as singular. Even the most exterior determinations of the body-as-object concern the being of the self, since they are what it assumes and sometimes denies. One may understand from Sadraean theory that the same nature is involved in both cases and the self interpreted as the presential cognition is located in the body. First, we should recall that the body is not only a non-totalisable whole of objective determinations explored by science; nor is it merely a whole of organs by which action realizes its ends: it is also these ends themselves. Insofar as it lives and I experience it, it is not only capable of acting, but also of willing and thinking: will and thought are not externally related to it. To say this is not to refine away the body or to transmute it into something psychic; it is only to deny the right to reduce it (insofar as it is my self) to the status of an object. Moreover, as we already hinted, Sadra has attempted to define that the presential cognition is, in its original state, neither explicit knowledge nor a condensed knowledge put into storage. It is a power of anticipating and revealing, a nonacquired familiarity with certain aspects of Being; this power exists in the self like a mode of being. The body also situates the self and singularizes it; outside of it, impersonal self is an abstraction like matter. This seems to autuorise Sadra to bring the presential cognition and the corporeal together. They cannot be brought together by asserting that the presential cognition resides in the body. This claim has no meaning since the body is not a container. He seems to say that the presential cognition, in the ontetic level, is the body.
This formula may invite us to consider the presential cognition as corporeal capacity. The mental and the corporeal do not exclude each other here, since Sadra insists that the body is not a system of blindly functioning mechanisms. It might seem, however, that the body’s capacities are nothing more than mechanisms parading under the name of habits. A habit is capacity– “know-how” — to the extent that it utilizes automatisms without letting itself be overcome by them. Such a capacity is manifested by the grasp it gives us on Being and by a kind of acquired spontaneity it confers on our acts. Habit transcends itself in its exercise as the body does in its actions; it is not a mere corporeal capacity, but a mode of being belonging to the self that is engaged in Being and presented in/to Being. The skill of the worker constitutes his very being, as well as his knowledge of how to work.
Therefore, habit is a corporeal capacity which cannot be reduced to a physical capacity– neither when it is put into practice, nor even when it holds itself in reserve. For to form a habit is not to become a robot; rather, it is to gain a being, to become capable of a certain attitude toward Being. The habits by which the self manifests a certain style take possession of a world which is his own and comprehend it. Now, the only difference between the presential cognition and habit is that the former is a nonacquired habit, even if it comes to light only through experience. The presential cognition is the ground from which habits arise; it determines the facility and rapidity of their execution on the basis of certain basic dispositions. I can more or less easily acquire certain capacities which are secondary dispositions: a second nature. Thus Sadraean doctrine can lead to say that the presential cognition is corporeal without being unfair to it; this means that the self knows, or rather prepares itself to know, according to its nature, that is, with its body. If the presential cognition is nothing more than the expression of a certain familiarity with Being, this familiarity requires the participation of the body.
Without psychologising the presential cognition, and anxious to consider it in its produces rather than in its being, Sadra certainly correlate it with an especial kind of imagintion: the disjunctive imagination (khayaal monfasil). In its original state, this imagination has ontetic power for noetic creation and represents the presential cognition. In a word, the presential cognition is prepared in this imagination. Certainly for Sadra it is the condition under which the presential cognition can perform its function. This imagination that is the presential cognition in its original state, is the presential cognition in its corporeal state as well. According to Sadra, sensibility and understanding are rooted in this creative imagination; it introduces the unity require by the “I think” into the pure diversity of the sensible. But reference to sensibility may imply a reference to corporeality. Meanwhile, sensibility signifies the finitude of the self, his receptivity: to be restricted to sensible intuition is to be forced to open oneself to the object and above all to wait for it. This opening is made possible only by a movement of disconnection a withdrawal; since this withdrawal manifests time, time is the form of sensibility. Now, we can say that this rupture is effected with the body thus for Sadra representation arises when the totality of image is broken. The body hollows out to hole in being because it is already a body-as-self, the organ of the will or a centre of indetermination, and because in it things become seen over against a freedom; the freedom implied by finitude can be assigned to the body. Therefore, pure sensibility evokes the body, and invites us to put it at the origin of knowledge. For Sadra, this imagination assures unity in the determination of sensibility. Only the imagination–i.e., the common root of understanding and sensibility– can create and perform the epistemic synthesis (be of the sensible or not). However, Sadra says, one can virtually attribute this synthetic activity to the body; such an activity expresses the way the body experiences time–that is, the way it structures time is an art hidden in the ontological heart of the human body, and it is not easy to describe its operation, for to do so it must show how the body orients itself in time before orienting itself in Being, as well as how, in sum, the determination of time is a determination of the body according to its motor possibilities. Nevertheless, although subordinating time to the corporeal substantiative movement, as well as the apprehension of time to the act, by which the “I think” constructs its inner phenomena so that the discrimination of temporal moments serves to organize the succession of the acts of the mind in inner sense, this discrimination is realized by a return to the motoricity of the self.
Therefore, imagination could virtually be attributed to the body, and the images might be compared to corporeal virtualities.
Involved in this is something like a corporeal foreknowledge of the object. Perhaps the operation of the body is obvious here: it consists in proffering a word. When I say “dog,” I do not form the concept of dog, nor do I produce its image; yet I know what I am talking about, and something is awakened in me which prepares me for receiving the experience or the idea of a dog, just as habit makes me immediately familiar with an object– even before I utilize it. What is thus awakened in me is neither a particular image which would be a copy of a perception, nor a generic image which would be the result of an amalgam; rather, it is an image of an image. This receptive attitude called forth by a word is a corporeal rule for guiding transcendence. And, moreover, language is the constantly available intermediary between consciousness and body. It preserves knowledge in its original state and in this sense is quite corporeal because the body is the speaking power. Yet we remain here on the empirical level: language is learned, and learning languages involves not only the pronunciation of phonemes, but also the understanding of semantemes, the sedimentation of meanings in words and of words in meanings. Imagination cannot be identified with language. It, however, constitutes a sort of pre-language, an original orientation of the body as still not speaking–an orientation by which consciousness becomes sensitive to certain experiences that language can later render explicit, but that do not refer to any particular and namable objects; instead, imagination concerns certain forms or structures of Being which the body prepares us to experience by means.
Furthermore, if the presential cognition down into the body, then we can speak of the presential cognition of the body, designating by this the fundamental activities and constituting by this a style of life for a species in a certain environment: a specific difference must manifest itself for all living creatures both in the lived and the objective body, and we apprehend this difference in behaviour. This means that instinct, which first exists as brute, would be transcendent. The brute power can be discovered only when it is actualized. But its ontetic transcendence is not merely corporeal. It also represents a brute knowledge which can be made explicit and which is actualized in this knowledge; that is we can recognize its transcendence in this knowledge; that is, in its spontaneity and certainty. Its corporeality can only be inferred, not experienced or verified directly. In contrast, the pure1y corporeal diposition is revealed when the engagement of the body and Being is observed externally, and when we realize how primitive and necessary the correlation of individual and environment is. Then the presential cognition is known but it is not knowledge; for we cannot invoke even a brute knowledge concerning the kind of exchange and harmony established between body and Being. This relation indicates that the body already is a self; but this is immediately alienated in the experienced correlate, and the perceiving body is not the thinking body. This is why it is difficult to speak about the presential cognition on the level of corporeal presence as opposed to representation. Physical virtualities, which define animal species rather than singular men, species as individuals rather than individuals as species, are innate insofar as they are specific. They are not however genuinely innate, because they do not belong to the self for whom birth is an ontological event, the advent of a for-itself. At the vital level, the pact seal between the living creature and his environment foreshadows and can illustrate the harmony between the self and Being revealed by the presential cognition, but the two pacts are not identical. Science discloses the first and can clarify through the notion of finality, or even reduced it through the idea of causality. The second belongs to transcendent philosophy because it belongs to the ontetic field.
The above considerations bring us to ask if we can finally separate the vital from the mental. If the vital illustrates the mental, it also prepares for it. The dimensions of behaviour have a properly metaphysical meaning in reserve: to look for food is already to experience the lack which– since “human reality is an ontetic lack (faghr wojodi)”– “appears in Being only with the upsurge of human reality”. The emptiness of hunger is a prefiguration of the perpetually future void found in the self’s presence to itself. The fact that these metaphysical meanings are realized in action rather than in thought, the actualization taking place in behaviour instead of in consciousness, does not effect the presential cognition character of the dispositions which give rise to this behaviour. What would throw this character into doubt would be the failure of these characteristic dispositions of the self to be constitutive of the object as well. Yet they do constitute the object; here again the self finds its correlate in Being through the presential cognition.
In short, on this level one can say that the equality of the presential cognition and the body can be interoperated as a twofold meaning leading us to two regards of the presential cognition: first, the presential cognition as corporeal presence and it is authentic and ontetic; second, the presential cognition as represence. The former concerns with the vital body, and the latter concerns with the thinking body. Then what could we called the vital value of the object calls forth the body itself and its vital forces: the living, not the thinking body. In contrast with this, the presential cognition as represence, if it is also corporeal, suggests another aspect of the body, it is the brute oriented toward thought and not deposited by life; it is the presential cognition in the level of corporeal presence, actualized by represence. Therefore, we can speak of the presential cognition as corporeal presence, that is the vitality by which the body expresses its living being, as well as of the presential cognition as represence by which the body expresses its thinking being.
In fact, to say that the presential cognition is ontetic invites us to say that the body is a form of the presential cognition. We can attribute a double transcendence to it: the transcendence characteristic of intentionality insofar as the body aims at Being, and the transcendence found in the act of surpassing to the extent that, being engaged in Being, the body surpasses itself and becomes body-as-self. The body is both a centre of reference and a centre of indetermination. But it does not fulfil its task completely: It orients itself in an environment, but it does not reveal a world. Real transcendence belongs to the for-itself, the being capable of an absolute release of a radical withdrawal both from Being and from itself: the being that is conscious. Only a consciousness can radically open itself to Being, and become this openning and perspective. This openness is perspectival only because the body limits it to a certain point of view, and perhaps this openness is possible only because the body puts me in/to Being. Yet it remains the case that the body itself can be understood as transcendent only in reference to consciousness, and because it is consciousness in a certain sense. Consciousness can be conceived on the basis of the body. But without passing through consciousness, an idea could be formed of the body-as-self, which is like a corporeal duplicate of consciousness. Moreover, starting from the body and investing it with all the burden of the presential cognition we would detect the presential cognition as corporeal presence.
The being of the self must be reconsidered here. In discovering the unity of consciousness and body, it must be confirmed above all that what exists is the self, not consciousness. The necessity of understanding the self in terms of consciousness changes nothing here. As for-itself, consciousness does not constitute the self. For it is not an attribute, a specific difference, that is, a “having”, rather, it is a manner of being or, more exactly, of non-being. Yet this non-being implies a being: in the self, the for-itself presupposes the in-itself, and this in-itself is the self insofar as it has a nature perpetually challenged by consciousness. This nature is the body assigned to the self that is both nature and non-nature, universality and singularity.
Now the being of the self also defines a nature and we can speak of it only because of the presential cognition; since it is the character of the self, and I carry it within myself as brute and I am it in a certain way. The being of self is the summation of the presential cognition which determines the field of my intention and the style of my relationship with Being. And this defines my nature. It even defines the ambiguity of this nature. For “nature” may be understood in two senses: as that which generalizes and as that which singularizes. Sadra has underlined the self’s singularity as well as his selfhood. But there is also a generality of the self: if there were not, we can not speak of the consciousness in general.
The presential cognition in this sense provides an explanation for the kinship between selves, not their plurality; for the similarity of their nature, not the identity of their selfhood. For the fact that there are other selves like myself, that the other is the same, and that the form of the ”I” is universal in all ontologically primary fact, and, is just as irreducible and unjustifiable as the upsurge of the for-itself. Sadra expresses this well by saying that the other is the one I encounter, the one in whom I discover the indefinite increase of selfhood. The presential cognition is itself a nature or power which appears as singular only when actualised; it is anonymous insofar as it is indeterminate. Nevertheless, such an indeterminate nature does not as yet confer a real generality on the self. But the presential cognition is also brute; in the sense that it is not present in a single self. The self’s singularity results precisely from the fact that only the presential cognition as corporeal presence lives in it, combining into a unique formula drawn out of the field of the possible. Therefore, selves resemble one another because their presential cognitions are rooted in the same field.
4.4 The Self, the Body and Causal Relation
In the rest of this chapter, I would examine the above reconstructed concept of Sadraean doctrine of self-body with regard to one of the perplexing problems in contemporary philosophy of mind: that of mental causation. My objective here is to introduce, in the light of the ontetic structure of the self, an ontological notion of mental causation to see how far his notion of mental causation can contribute to remedy the contemporary perplexity on mental causation.
After formulating the contemporary problem of mental causation, I will start from the understandings of causation by tracing it through a rapid study of epiphenomenalism, mental realism, mental anomalism, counterfactual and supervenience approaches, and then I will continue to recapitulate Sadraean view to express its fresh and novel aspects.
A. The Problem
In recent decades analytical philosophers have become increasingly aware of the importance of causation in the analysis of the self. It seems, however, that there is a perplexity in explaining mental causation in contemporary philosophy of mind. The crucial aspect of this perplexity is hidden in two interrelated factors: (I) abolition of the Substantial view of the self; and (II) restricting the concept of causation to the physical efficient causation. I would proceed to trace a brief description of these factors, and then will turn to Sadra’s approach to see if we can find any support for mental causation.
(I) abolition of the Substantial view of the self:
Although they have not been almost successful in explaining the self-body relationship, ancient great philosophers described self as soul and believed in mental substances. The main idea is that each of us is a composite being made up of two distinct substances, an immaterial self and a material body. By ‘substance’ almost understood something that can “exist independently” and have properties and enter into relationships with other substances. This view that found its modern formulation in Cartesian dualism is rejected by many contemporary philosophers of self for it does not seem credible that an immaterial substance, with distinct and independent characteristics and totally outside physical space, could causally influence, and be influenced by the motions of material bodies that are strictly governed by physical laws. It seems to them that this Substantial view is inable to explain the possibility of mental causation, namely, how mentality can make a causal difference to the material body. 32
With rejecting the Substantial view of the self, we are asked to characterize the mental with ‘properties, events, and processes all of them must be classified in trems of physical behaviours and functions (e.g. sensation, perception, memory, consciousness, and the like). This is why the principal characteristic of contemporary philosophy of mind is its physicalistic frame.
(II) The restricted concept of causation:
Thanks to modern scientific view the concept of causation confined to efficient causation and other possible kinds of causation were omitted within the physicalistic frame of contemporary philosophy of mind. On the basis of this restricted concept of causation, the problematic aspect of mental causation appears in explaining two interrelated questions:
(1) Has the self any causal power to create mental events or to cause a change in a material body and to initiate a causal chain of physical events?
(2) If the self has such a power, does mental causation require backing by laws connecting mental and physical events and properties?
B. Current Solutions
In the contemporary philosophy of mind there are three approaches to the issue:
(A) Epiphenomenalism: Epiphenomenalism supposes that (a) all mental event are caused by physical events, and (b) mental events are only epiphenomena, that is events without powers to cause any other event (be mental or physical), and when there is no causal power for the self, there will be no need to the connecting laws. Scientific behaviourists, type/reductive physicalists are examples of this approach. 33
(B) Mental realism: While epiphenomenalistic approach denies any causal power for the self, mental realism indicates that the mental causation is possible and there must be laws connecting the mental to the physical. This approach widely accepted has its defenders in contemporary philosophy of mind, even though with a functionalistic/ instrumentalistic version. 34
(C) Mental anomalism: It is a doctrine suggested by Donald Davidson and seems to imply a third approach which intermediated between mental realism and epiphenomenalism and one may regard it as an attempt to reconcile them with each other. 35 As for the first question, Davidson accepts that there are some forms of causality, but his answer to the second question is negative that is there is no strict psychophysical laws. Along with mental realism, this approach agrees that the mental events sometimes cause physical events; however, this causation is a property causation which is based on token physicalism, because it claims that all events, including mental events, are physical events; this means that, in agreement with epiphenomenalism, the mental may have no causal power in itself because, Davidson argues, there is no psychophysical laws connecting the mental to the physical, and since mental causation requires such laws, it follows that there is no causal relations between the mental in itself and the physical. Property mental causation then is the claim that the mental events are causes and effects of physical events; and to say this is to say that the mental event has a physical property such that an appropriate law connects this property with the property of the physical event. Mental properties have causal efficacy whether these are construed as properties of events or of objects.
Though Davidson’s view can help mental realism against classic epiphenomenalism by accepting a special kind of mental causation, he nevertheless leaves it with two basic unsolved problems; first as classic epiphenomenalism, he agrees that the mental has no causal power in itself; the mental can cause a change so far as it has physical properties. Second, it is not clear how anomalous mental properties, properties that are not fit for laws, can be causally efficacious properties. To remove these problems, some philosophers of self have tried to modify the nomological conception of causality as understood by Davidson. They suggest two alternative versions of causation on which mental properties, though anomalous, could be causally efficacious: The first is the counterfactual account of causation and the second is the supervenience account of causation.
(1) The counterfactual account (be accepted in its nomic-derivational or in its possible-world versions) accepts mental causality as understood by common sense, and then we need laws, even though nonstrict. According to its nomic approach, causality explores a necessary condition; so when we say that X caused Y, we have already said that if X had not been the case, Y would not have been the case. Then there is no mystery. The mental events in virtue of their mental properties can and do sometimes cause physical events because we can and do sometimes know approperiate psychophysical counterfactuals to be true. Mental causation is possible because according to this approach such counterfactuals are sometimes true. 36
(2) Supervenience account of mental causation is still more interesting. This approach indicates that mental properties supervenient on physical properties; any two objects or events that are exactly alike in all physical respects can not differ in mental respects; that is, there can be no mental difference unless there is a physical difference. According to this approach, the mental which is supervenient on one physical base, can be a supervenient cause for another physical event, but we must not understand by this that the mental is really an effective cause in the sense that it brings about that physical change and event. On contrary, it is the former physical base that cause the latter; suppose that you feel a pain in your elbow so that causes you to wince; this pain supervenes on a physical base which is neural state; commmonsensely it is understood that it is pain that causes muscle contraction to wince. According to supervenient approach, however, it is right if we understand by the word “cause” here “superveniently cause”: the pain supervenes on the neural state and the wincing supervenes on the muscle contraction; the pain’s causation of wincing consists in its supervenience base of wincing which is fully physical, then when we say the pain causes muscle contraction it is because the pain’s supervenience base (which is physical) causes it; we may also speak of the pain as a supervenient cause of the wincing, but in the sense that its supervenience base causes the supervenience base of the wincing. 37
As one may rightly expect from the above depiction, contemporary philosophers of self are probablely able to explain the physical-mental causal relation in terms of their accepted principles; but they seem to be no much success in explaining the mental-mental, and the mental-physical causal relations. This is not only because of the restricted concept of causation employed here, but also, as I already hinted, because of the expulsion of selves as Substantial entities. Mental events and processes are now considered as certain physical systems like biological organisms, not Substantial immaterial selves. The problem of mental causation is then formulated in terms of two kinds of events or properties within a physicalistic frame.
The challenge thus posed by contemporary philosophy of mind in explaining mental causation consists in a twofold idea against which it seems logical that if one denies immateriality and Substantiality of the self, one can conclude that there is only one form of causation; that is the physical efficient causation. All approaches mentioned above accept this main idea. To remove this challenge, however, it would seem that we may take a twofold way of responding to this challenge: First, we may try to reject its principal premise, namely the negation of immateriality and Substantiality of the self; and second, we may try to show that the physical efficient causation- in particular as presented and understood by contemporary philosophy of mind is not the only concept of causation, and that there are alternative concept of causation on which the self could causally efficacious. In the next section, I will try to explore this possibility by introducing Sadraean point of view.
C. Sadra’s Concept of Mental Causation:
So far I tried to brief current solutions for the problem of mental causation. Let us now consider this problem in the context of our reconstructed theory of Sadraean doctrine. But we first introduce Sadra’s concept of causation: 38
For Sadra, causation has a wide sense and a narrow sense. In its wide sense, causation may be applied so that includes occasion and condition which are not real cause. In the narrow sense of causation, so far as its nature is concerned, Sadra suggests again an existential interpretation. According to this interpretation; causation is bringing into being; this means that cause causes an object to exist; the cause, therefore authors only existence and not the essence of that object. In other words, the effect depends on its cause only for its existence not for its essence. When the object comes to exist, it then manifests its proper essence. Moreover, he suggests that what are called natural, temporal causes are not real causes but only occasions or conditions, since they only cause movement or change and do not give existence to the effect; true cause is only that which not only gives existence to its effect but also its continuity, so that it becomes inconceivable that an effect should last without its cause. The effect, therefore, has its being only in the cause, not outside of it, since the cause must be ‘present with’ the effect throughout the latter existence.39 Having Sadraean concept of causation in mind, let us turn to the problem of mental causation.
As I mentioned, the contemporary perplexity on mental causation in philosophy of mind is hidden in two interrelated factors: (I) abolition of the Substantial view of the self; and (II) restricting the concept of causation to the physical efficient causation. Now we see that Sadra accepts the Substantial view of self with an absolutely non-classic expression and meanwhile provides us with an ontetic concept of causality which can pioneer a non-physical concept of mental causation. In the light of these concepts, we may now extract Sadra’s view of the mental causation. As we already formulated, mental causation is principally whether the self has any causal power to create mental events or to cause a change in a material body and to initiate a causal chain of physical events?
To understand Sadra’s position,40 we must start with the agency of the self which are characterized by free volition and choice. So everybody finds within itself that he has capacity to perform actions and this involves his causing. This is preceded by will which is the result of knowledge or imagination accompanied by desire. Having the experience of itself as the agent the self discovers itself to be at the origin of its acting. It is upon it that the existence of acting as such depends: in it, it has its origin, and it sustains its existence. To be the cause means to produce an effect and to sustain its existence, its becoming and its being. The self is thus in a wholly experiential way the cause of its acting. There is between self and action a sensibly experiential, causal relation which brings the self to recognize its action to be the result of its efficacy; in this sense it must accept its actions as its own property. This is the most evident kind of “mental efficient causation.” Without going into the details of this thesis, we have at any rate to accept that part of it which asserts the special self-evidence of self’s efficient causation in acting, that is, the efficient causation of self who acts.
This view strongly confirms mental realism in the sense that, contrary to epiphenomenalism, the self has power to create mental forms or cause a change in a material body and to initiate a causal chain of physical events. In latter cases, the appearance of the mental emergents, as Sadra holds, depends on the presence of appropriate conditions and occassions; and as we saw, this means that the mental emergents in these cases emerge only when right physical bodily conditions obtain. According to Sadra, however, once the mental emergents have emerged, they begin to have a life of their own and manifest their powers by causally affecting physical bodily phenomena. This position clearly supports a positive solution for the most important problem of mental causation which is called ‘downward causation’ in contemporary philosophy of mind. Perhaps it is obvious from Sadraean principles mentioned above that acceptance of downward causation is a fundamental commitment of Sadra’s perspective: as he expresses the mental forms including mental properties, events and process are real in the sense that they have causal powers; that is, having a mental form must endow the object that has it with powers to affect courses of events. Meanwhile as Sadraean principle of irreducibility of mental emergents demands, the mental forms are distinct from their physical bodily basis. Now if being real means having causal powers, the mental real implies irreducible causal powers which must be absolutely different from those of physical body which as we saw Sadra called them physical conditions and occassions. If so, the question is: how does the self, (including mental forms, properties, events and process) manifests its causal power?
As the principal problem of mental causation reveals, there are two cases:
(a) A mental form has the power to cause another mental form to be instantiated;
(b) A mental form causes a change in a material body and to initiate a causal chain of physical events.
The case (a) reveals the same-level causation; the case (b) shows downward causation. While many contemporary philosophers face troubles in explaining specially the latter case, we see that Sadraean position can support to justify this.
First, one may show that the case (a) presuppose the case (b); because in the case (a), when the mental form causes another one, the latter emerges on the present of a physical bodily occasions or condition which is physically realiser of that mental form; As Sadra already said the physical events can not be true causes but only motivating reasons, then they can not cause the mental form to be instantiated, and that mental form is not an effect of such physical realiser. In such case, according to Sadra, the former mental form, on the principles of mental faculties and creativity, causes the latter mental form by causing its physical realiser/s to be instantiated. In the case of begin a pain about, we must bring about an instance of physical bodily condition, and to cause or eliminate it by working through its physical realiser/s. This position proves the claim that the acceptance of causal relations among the mental forms implies the acceptance of downward causation.
It is worth noting that this position changes the current understanding of mental causation, and is something that neither the reductivist nor antireductivist approaches (counterfactual and supervenience included) could accept it; because from this perspective, even the importance of physical conditions and occasions frankly accepted, the mental causation remains property of the self and not of the physical body. On contrary, on the reductionistic approach, the causal powers of the mental are wholly derived from the physical. The mental has no new causal powers over and beyond the causal powers of the physical. Antireductivist approaches, including counterfactual and supervenience versions, even though are against this claim, however, since they believe in causation of the physical differ from Sadraean approach in this fact that they interpret the mental downward causation in terms of physical causation which simultaneously happens among the realisers of the mentals, and this is what Sadra fundamentally rejects.
By this account we see that Sadraean interpretation of mental causation puts forwards a different and interesting perspective which can helpfully contribute to remedy the issue.
D. Final Considerations:
I would conclude this chapter with several important points to sufficiently clarify novel aspects of Sadra’s overall depiction of mental causation:
First, we must note that Sadraean concept of mental causation provides us with a metaphysical ontetic view which automatically removes any epiphenomenalistic as well as physicalistic understanding of causation which confines it only to the physical efficient causation.
Second, contrary to contemporary philosophers of self Sadra continues to hold the Substantial view of the self; even though he agrees, as we saw, that the self emerges on and within the body. His ontetic existential account of the emergence of the self with/in the body allows us to keep the substantiality as well as simplicity of the self and at the same time avoid the difficulties of the classic view of self-body dualism and interactionism, just as allows us to avoid difficulties with the basic idea of abolition of the self as a simple substance which is commonly accepted as departure point of contemporary philosophy of mind.
Third, as we saw, Sadraean view supports mental realism insofar as by mental realism is understood that the self by itself has power to cause; however, if mental realism indicates, as contemporary mental realists hold, that mental causation can be real in the same sense of physical causation, it then find no support in Sadra’s transcendent account.
Fourth, Sadra’s interpretation has no need to involve the problem of bridge laws or psychophysical laws which is one of most important issues in current discussion on mental causation. As I classified as second question of contemporary formulation of the mental causation, it is asked whether mental causation requires backing by laws connecting mental and physical events and properties. According to Sadra, we need not such laws. This seemingly agrees with Davidson’s ‘anomalous monism’ which also rejects such laws; however, this is not the case; because they differ from two aspects:
(1) Davidson accepts physical efficient causation and his interpretation of mental causation, as we saw, leads him to a property epiphenominalism which does not accept any causation for the mental in itself; while Sadra rejects any kind of epiphenomenalism and does not hold true causality for the physical.
(2) Davidson denies psychophysical laws only in intentional mental events and states, those with propositional content, while Sadra rejects such law in general. His position is clearly evident from the principles I mentioned above: according to them, being an emergent substance, the self (along with its mental forms, event, states etc) becomes of all faculties during its Substantial change and keeps continue to posses all lower-level powers and potencies in their actual formats so that it can bring them in force and create them on the occasion of the appropriate physical conditions. So the self does not need bridge laws or psychophysical laws, because it existentially and then actually possesses lower-level physical potencies in itself. This is without doubt a novel account and can help in this concern.
Fifth and finally, Sadra’s account confirms, even if indirectly that any exposition of mental causation needs a more metaphysical/ontological expression, and we should not confine ourselves to scientific psychology and cognitive sciences.
CHAPTER FIVE
Conclusions
As yet I have reconstructed the transcendent doctrine of the self as a presential cognition. Now in this chapter, it would be briefly mentioned how it may contribute to removing aspects of modern subjectivism. I will start with the dichotomy of subject-object that is, perhaps, the most important characteristic of modern subjectivism and continue to consider the relation of the presential cognition with reflective knowledge by which our knowledge, according to the transcendent theory, is already rooted in existence. Then I will set forth some immediate conclusions including (i) a refutation of a triple implication concerning the relation of the self and reality which follows from the subjectivistic gap;(ii) the agreement of the transcendent theory with common sense; and (iii) a suggestion as to how one could read the authors of modern theory of the self such as Descartes, in the transcendent context.
I. The Dichotomy of Subject-Object
Among the serious problems of philosophical thought, the modern understanding of the subject-object dichotomy has found its most dangerous form in modern Western subjectivism.
Descartes’ methodological doubt ends up in an underlying subject, a wordless self who is a separate substance as res cogitans distinguished from the world as res extensa. As asked even by his contemporary critics, 1 a simple question raises here: How does the subject, res cogitans, correctly know the object, the res extensa? This question is roughly applied to the subjectivistic epistemology and there is no way to escape from its maze if we remain in the subjectivistic standpoint. Kant, for example, begins his philosophy with a sharp subject-object dichotomy, resulting in the problematic distinction between phenomena (objects as they appear to the subject) and noumena (objects as they exist in themselves); He finally maintained that the latter can not be grasped by our mind; what the mind knows is only the former. Kant’s drawing of the question perhaps is its best logical formulation in language of the subjectivism. This, however, leads us, as Hegel reminds us, to an ultimate scepticism, never knowing whether one really knows the things as they are or not. Hegel himself tries to interpret the Kantian “transcendental” to dissolve the problem of subject-object dichotomy to the benefit of a monism. He introduces the notion of “spirit” which is neither subject nor object. This avoidance of the subject-object dichotomy allows Hegel to claim access to Absolute Knowledge.
In the phenomenological tradition we can also see a similar confrontation between Husserl and Heidegger. Inspired by Cartesian method, Husserl starts from Kantian position claiming that, contrary to Kant, we can know objects-in-themselves. His theory of cognition, however, is not a theory of object. By this theory of cognition, he claims that we know objects as they are in-themselves; we know them as they are in themselves because they are constituted in our consciousness. Objects are only for our consciousness in so far as we constitute them, then the object we know are the object-in-themselves. 2 To justify this thesis, he uses the notion of “reason”, 3 partly in the Hegelian sense, to indicate that we know objects-in-themselves. Reason is characterized as “source of necessity” (Spinoza and Hegel) and it is a priori condition of possible experience. Obviously, the Kantian notion of understanding is here replaced by reason (again like Hegel). Identified with eidetic intuition, reason contrasts with the individual intuition. Reason carries with it the demand for necessity by which Husserl intends that the constitution of objects for consciousness proceeds in such a manner that any alternative constitution is impossible. Thus taken, reason implies that consciousness of objects is both intuition of the things-in-themselves and the constitution of objects by reason. Then, we know objects-in-themselves. Husserl, also, appeals to “intersubjectivity” to assure us that we know things-in-themselves in the same manner as the others do. In other words, by this thesis, he wants to prove that the world and its objects exist not only for me but also for any possible knower. Saying so, Husserl presupposes two points: first, constitution is one and the same for human beings; and second, what constitution produces is necessarily objects-in-themselves.
It is considered by philosophers like Heidegger, that this line of reasoning leads us nowhere; and perhaps this is why Husserl accepts the label of idealism and solipsism. How can we be sure whether the objects constituted in consciousness are objects-in-themselves, especially if we ignore, to borrow Fink’s phrase, the “ontological problem”?
Like Hegel who protests against Kant but rebuilds anew his transcendentalism at the same time, Heidegger also protests against Husserl while redirecting his phenomenology. In so doing, he tries to detect the being of the subject and then to put the subjectivistic standpoint aside, ignoring the subject-object dichotomy. He maintains that this relation is only ontic, and then should be dismissed by philosophy whose discussion is ontology. In this respect, Heidegger’s criticism against Husserl in particular is based on his evaluation of the Husserlian bracketing of world and existence. This bracketing leads, according to Heidegger, to commit oneself to scepticism from the outset. World or Being, Heidegger holds, can not be doubted; rather, the ego or consciousness, the Archimedean point of subjectivism is merely illusion. There is no subject distinguished from his world; there is no meaning for the subject without his being.
As we have already hinted, Heidegger tries to redefine the task of phenomenological method to rescue it from the trap of subjectivism. Husserl suggests that the true of the phenomenological method lies in the distinction of subject-object. Heidegger, on the contrary, maintains that the truth of this method is in the absence of this distinction, the rejection of which can be defended by phenomenological inquiry. This inquiry will show, according to Heidegger, the fundamental mistake in traditional philosophy and in Husserl’s philosophy in particular: The imaginary supposition of a “worldless” transcendental self. As we have already seen, Heidegger does not hesitate to reject such a notion of the self. Husserl had told us to go “back to the things themselves,” and then begins himself by talking about a transcendental self which, by its very nature, cannot be defended by phenomenology. Since the transcendental self can not be subject to the phenomenological description, according to Heidegger, there is no experience which can justify talk about such a self or an ego or consciousness, and, because of the rigorous restrictions on phenomenological research, such talk cannot be initiated apart from its foundation in phenomenology. There is, therefore, no subject, no ego; and an accurate, “primitive” view of our experience of the world cannot describe this experience as an experience of a transcendental self or ego. It cannot even say with Hume that there are experiences (or “thoughts” after Descartes), for this description leads us back to the notion of a “subject” that “has” experiences. There is simply, according to Heidegger’s analysis, a “being-in-the-world”. The Cogito of Descartes, the “I Think” of Kant, and the “pure ego” of Husserl, these are only exaggerated recognitions of a grammar which forces us to use the expression “I”. This is only a grammatical necessity, it does not refer us to any special substance or even to a unifying principle of consciousness, and it has no ontological significance whatsoever.
“The word “I” is to be understood only in the sense of a non-committal formal indicator.” 4
There is, therefore, no “I” which can be substantially distinguished from the world in general, and there can be no bracketing or doubting of things “outside of” consciousness. Once we have given up the notion of the transcendental self or ego and its implications (“contents of consciousness,” the “external world”), traditional epistemological problems can not be raised. Heidegger argues that the transcendental self or ego “discovered” in the Cartesian Cogito and affirmed in Husserlian epoche is not a substantial self, but only a “formal indicator” that does not commit to postulating any entity called the self. The self is rather a conception impose on us by the other (Das man). What is there is only a fallen being — a Dasein.
Heidegger seems quite right in reconsidering the root of subject or, correctly speaking, in devaluating the subject to the profit of Being. It is also appreciated that the scepticism arising from subject-object dichotomy has been a constant source of philosophical perplexity in “modern” Western philosophy. However, it would not be understood from all these that we should dismiss the problem which is at the basis of our language and structuralizes our reflective knowledge. Reflection can be justified only by rediscovering this dichotomy in order to ground it in a fair manner.
II. The Relation of the Presential cognition with the Reflective Knowledge
To give a solution to this, Sadra tells us that the subject-object dichotomy belongs to the field of reflection, that of eidetic consciousness (in the Husserlian sense). It is because in the ontetic field, as already suggested, there is no room for this dichotomy; because of the presential cognition, there is no object there, then no subject; no mind, no self (in the subjectivistic sense); there is only a presential cognition identified with the being of the self as an emanative entity who is absorbed in Being. No object, no subject; there is only a unified existent as consciousness. We are this consciousness in the horizon of Being. We ordinarily have a continuous experience of this presential cognition. This state is not accessible for our reflective thought whose texture, according to Sadra, is eidetic (remember Sartre’s non-reflective consciousness). This is because reflective thought is raised from this presential cognition or, correctly speaking, the presential cognition creates reflective thought. The subject-object dichotomy, according to Sadra, is above all an ontetic relation. By this way Sadraean transcendent philosophy does not dismiss the subject-object dichotomy; rather it sees the problematic of this dichotomy, as Heidegger also hinted, in neglecting the notion of Being. However, Sadra does not dismiss the problem for this reason (as Heidegger seems to do). On contrary, it encounters this dichotomy aiming to solve it by finding an ontetic ground for it. In other words, transcendent philosophy accepts such a dichotomy by assigning it to reflective thought. The problem is not then hidden in this dichotomy itself, but in dismissing its foundation. Therefore, if one can justify the generation of reflective thought from an ontetic point of view, the dichotomy of subject-object remained subsequently confirmed without involving it in subjectivism. We would recall this point while speaking of the transcendent solution.
On this account, the relationship of the presential cognition to reflective knowledge is taken by transcendent philosophy in terms of illumination and emanation. This kind of relation is nothing other than a typically existential relationship of which transcendent philosophy speaks in its terminology as an illuminative relation (al-idafa-tol-ishraqheyyah).
This also implies that reflective knowledge is existential and in the final analysis this kind of knowledge is a mode of being.5 This is because reflective knowledge is grounded by and generated from the presential cognition; that is to say, it is a determination (ta’ayyon) of the presential cognition through which the former is constituted by the transcendent relation. In this respect, the upshot of this discussion follows: “. . . [the reflective] knowledge. . . is being.” 6
By such a thesis on the nature of the reflective knowledge, transcendent philosophy approves, with some reservations, its relevant efforts in the existential phenomenology to bestow an existential nature to reflective knowledge. Heidegger whose aim is an “ontological reflection”, writes in the same case: “The whole correlation necessarily gets thought as “somehow” being.” 7 He also reminds us of others like Scheler and Hartmann on this subject:
“Following Scheler’s procedure, N. Hartmann has recently based his ontologically oriented epistemology upon the thesis that [reflective] knowing is “relationship of being”.” 8
Nevertheless, these authors do not found the relation between ontology and reflective knowledge as an illuminative relation. Heidegger, for example, tries to found this relation on the temporality of Dasein that, in his eyes, discloses the reflection as a grounded mode of Dasein’s existence. Moreover, he does not engage himself to see how ontological thought furnishes us with objects which unavoidably concern us in our reflection.
On contrary, Sadra has tried not only to discover in the presential cognition, so to speak, the mechanism of grounding reflective thought, but also to see how the former supplies objects for the latter. Though it is beyond our aim to engage in his detailed conception of reflective thought, it may be worth remembering that the presential cognition existentially discovers the reality of beings with which it is in ontetic touch — that is, in its living experience of Being; then the creative imagination (which is called by contemporary Sadraean philosopher Tabatabai, the converter (mobaddel) of the presential cognition),9 translates those realities as objects of our subject.
This illustration may seem to oversimplify Sadra’s position in this respect, but I will intentionally avoid discussing more about this aspect of the transcendent doctrine here because explaining requires the introduction of important materials from other Sadraean theories (e.g. the disjunctive imagination, human faculties, etc) that are beyond our purpose here. In fact, he has discussed this issue in detail through demonstrating mental existence in the first instance,10 but he crucially reconsiders this issue when he tries to show how the presential cognition dominates all aspect of our episteme in its broad sense: It grounds our episteme, because the efficiency of all epistemic faculties including the subjectivity of the subject, depends on it. 11
III. Final Considerations
In the rest of this chapter I would set forth some immediate applications and implications of Sadraean theory as presented in this treatise:
IIIa. As hinted above, the presential cognition, according to Sadra, guarantees the objectivity of objects as well. Since the reality of beings with which a presential cognition is in ontetic touch are existentially present before it, it then already is sure of, so to speak, the external reality of objects which concern the subject — specially if we remember the non-erroneous character of the presential cognition. Therefore, we can conclude that apart from its other activity, the presential cognition grounds two things in respect to reflective thought: The subjectivity of the subject and the objectivity of the object. This may need a bit more description.
As it appears from the previous discussions, the presential cognition is an existentially current experience of beings with which it is in ontetic touch. Through this, the presential cognition discovers the reality of beings. In so doing, the presential cognition pushes us to be not merely receptive in relation with the world; rather, we are creative and go out to meet it, and always anticipate it. It is why there are things we do not learn; why we know them from the beginning, as if we had always been familiar with them. That is, as we have seen, the presential cognition implies coexistentiality. As we saw, the presential cognition creates the object independently of the subject, even though the object is always an object for a subject. What the subject does possess is the aptitude for comprehending objects supplied for him by it and, once given, recognised by the subject. 12
Once again, we see that such a process of elaborating objects requires the pre-existence of the presential cognition. From the reflective standpoint, the presential cognition is what I already know, just as the slave boy in Plato’s Meno already “knew” geometry — though the slave boy does not know that he knows geometry. His knowledge is an existential experience in his everydayness that could remain veiled, concealed and latent. This implicit awareness appears as present in him, without needing to be formulated, and as a primordial certitude which is always present in him.
This means for Sadra, at least, that reflective knowledge is not, as subjectivism implies, groundless. Our reflection always springs from, proceeds and acts in the context of our “being” as the presential cognition that puts us in an ontetic touch with the reality of beings that are present for us by their actual beings. Then, on this, we are not indeed deprived of the real world. 13 Nor are we misled in grasping beings in the world, the things in themselves even in the plane of reflective thought simply because reflective thought is currently supported by the presential cognition which picks up the real and inserts it into the reflective language (of course, this language, has its own nature one characteristic of which is that it is subject to error dependent on the weakness or strength of our epistemic faculties). This is, according to Sadraean theory, what is proven through our non-reflectively commonsensical everyday experience.
IIIb. In this context, the transcendent theory seems to give clues for our grasping of the reality of objects through appealing to their being in the ontetic field. Understood as presential cognition, the self acts in a twofold way: On one hand, thanks to being an emanative entity situated in the context of Being, it has ontetic contact with beings (objects-in-themselves for reflective thought) so that these beings are immediately present to the self. The self then has access to the reality of beings through ontetic touch. 14 On the other hand, the self creates and grounds reflective thought by an illuminative relation. It means that the self as presential cognition ascertains the correspondence between concepts or representations and their external objects.
Thus understood, the theory eliminates the triple consequence of modern subjectivism as well: scepticism, solipsism and idealism. All these arise from presupposing a gap between a mental concept or representation and its external object, to which supposedly the subject has no access. If the subject has no access to external objects, then the subject is concerned with nothing but concepts and representations: an external world is presupposed only as a reference point for our concepts and representations. The fatal step in the triple consequence is losing the external world: how can we be sure of our knowledge of the external world (scepticism) while we have nothing but representations and concepts (idealism). The world as a whole depends on us — everybody is ultimately a monad (solipsism). 15
The transcendent theory avoids this triple trap simply because it maintains that the self does apprehend the external world, the reality of beings-in-themselves, through ontetic contact: the object-in-itself, while absent in our reflective thought, (in the eidetic field) nevertheless is present for the self by its being (in the ontetic field): I am already ontetically in touch with the pen with which I am writing, but not in an intentionally conscious manner of representative, reflective knowledge. Rather, I grasp its reality as it is in itself through hybridisation of my being and the being of pen, in the sense that its being is present for my presential cognition, (i.e., for my being). There is no room for the triple trap. The reality of pen is not totally absent for me, it is present by its being (be)for(e) my being. This idea is supported by another transcendent thesis explaining that the presential cognition is free from being mistaken; there is no error in the presential cognition because it is pure being. Then, when the presential cognition picks up the reality of a being (pen in our example), it does not make error. However, error may take place at the level of reflection while conceptualising that reality: in fact, what comes first is “Being” and the self is a fellow of it. We, ourselves, share a common site in reaching reality.16 What makes us different in our reflective interpretation of reality is our differences in the degrees of strength or weakness of faculties with which we translate that reality into the language of reflective thought. Thus the presential cognition sets us free from the triple trap of subjectivism. I am not living only with my representations, but, already with their actual facts.
IIIc. The transcendent theory of the presential cognition may also contribute to justify why some modern philosophers like Descartes and Kant presupposed the prior ideas/principles beyond our reflective faculties. Though there is a basic difference between the transcendent notion of “the presential cognition” and the theory of Cartesian “Innate ideas” or Kantian “a priori” (just because the presential cognition is a living existential experience), it can show that such theories are right so far as they approve the necessity of being an other domain (which we called the ontetic field) beyond our reflective thought. To the extent that such theories could be deformalised and exisitentialised, the transcendent theory accompanies and appreciates Cartesian or Kantian theories.
IVd. As it is supported by mystical practices, the transcendent theory of presential cognition also uniquely allows us to give experiential significance to the characterisation of the self as something which can neither be characterised nor defined in terms of empirical qualities and their collections and relationships. Without engaging in mysticism or in justification of the practical, mystical aspect of the transcendent theory, 17 we mention here that this point is supported by a profound experience of presential cognition widely reported by transcendent mystics who claimed to taste the high experience of “no-mind”, of identification of the self and presential cognition, by abandoning reflective thought and picking up the “presence” through meditative techniques, and whose mystical meditations claimed to cover all aspects of our experiences, including our external and internal perceptions.18 In the transcendent school, we rely on an empirical element as well as our ordinary commonsensical experiences (including our experiences of thinking).
Furthermore, on the assumption that experience of the self is necessarily present in every experience, one can again show that experience of presential cognition is not only an excellent candidate for experience of the self but the only possible one. Only an experience without any qualities can accompany every other possible experience and the experience of presential cognition meets this requirement uniquely. This argument is conclusive, but another argument is worth noting. Presential cognition is experienced in a performative state; this experience has no parts or components (indeed, even the manifolds of space and time, the very contexts in which parts can be distinguished, are not present in the experience). Therefore given our assumption that experience of one’s self is present in this experience of presential cognition, it must actually be this experience, as a whole, for the experience of this presential cognition has no part which can be assigned to or be specified as being the experience of the self. Thus we see not only that experience of presential cognition is the only possible candidate for fulfilling the criteria for experience of the self, as derived from Descartes and his modern philosophers but also it is the only possible candidate for fulfilling the commonsense intuition that the self is somehow experienced as present in every experience.
This last conclusion appears to raise a problem, however. For if the self is somehow experienced as present in every experience, as common sense insists, and if the experience of the presential cognition is identified as the relevant experience of the self, then the experience of the presential cognition must somehow be a component or aspect of every other experience. But this raises the question of why the presential cognition usually goes unnoticed, even when specifically sought. The answer immediately suggests itself that it goes unnoticed precisely because it is constant and present in all our experiences. Our attention tends to go to what is changing; what remains constant gradually recedes into the background. This in turn suggests that the transcendent notion of self as constant and unchanging, present somehow in all of our experiences, is a reflection of a vague yet widespread subliminal awareness of the presential cognition as pervading all our experiences. If this analysis is correct, the fact that the presential cognition usually comes to be noticed only when all the other contents of awareness cease to occupy our attention ceases to be puzzling and becomes what we expect. Finally, if this analysis is correct we would expect that the transcendent experience of the presential cognition renders it more noticeable and raises it from the existential level.
The identification of the presential cognition with the self thus offers a simple explanation for the otherwise very problematic fact that common sense continues to insist that the self is somehow present in all experience, even when it is unable to isolate it, and even when intellectual analysis convinces us that it cannot be given in experience by any empirical quality, or even abstractly accounted for by any relationship or collection of such qualities. For the self is present in all experience, there to be noticed, as qualityless presential cognition.
Ve. It also seems that the transcendent theory of the self can helpfully supply a means to unify apparently conflicting modern theories of self, and allow development of a theory of self capable of giving experiential realisation of the otherwise unfulfilable criteria derived from Descartes, Hume, Kant and Husserl (see, Ch1). In the following discussion, we will see this point in more detail.
Descartes claimed that he was able to locate the self, simple and abiding throughout our changing experiences. Philosophers such as Hume and Kant, however, insisted that they could not find any such self. Husserl remained in tension between Descartes on one hand and Hume and Kant on the other, and tried to reconcile them by suggesting the eidetic constitution. Nevertheless, Descartes’ analysis seems to be faithful to common sense. The analysis of the presential cognition makes this commonsense claim (and the appeal of Descartes’ analysis) intelligible, and in a way that suggests that common sense is in fact correct. In the absence of this transcendent consciousness, however, common sense and reflective analysis have often been in sharp conflict. Such a conflict can be found, for example, in Bertrand Russell’s views on the self.
The early Russell argued that “dualism of subject and object” is “a fundamental fact concerning cognition” and that “I am acquainted with myself.”19 Indeed, he seems to argue that there are precisely two things that we are aware of namely, the self and its presence. 20 Russell’s thesis, like Descartes, clearly conforms to common sense. Later, however, Russell changed his mind saying that
“Hume’s inability to perceive himself was not peculiar, and I think most unprejudiced observers would agree with him. Even if by great exertion some rare person could grasp a glimpse of himself, this would not suffice, for “I” is a term which we all know how to use.” 21
Russell finally concluded that the concept of the self has to be a mere “logical fiction,” “schematically convenient, but not empirically discoverable.” 22
Russell’s rejection of his earlier commonsensical view was based on his inability to discover in experience anything that could either correspond to or clarify our ordinary notion of the self as simple and abiding. We have already seen how the transcendent theory of the presential cognition is a good candidate for this experience of the self that Russell, like Hume before him, could not find.
The transcendent ontetic experience of the self, (especially as accepted by the transcendent mystics), seems also capable of removing the force of difficulties which arise from some linguistic approach to the self. In the history of Western philosophy, especially since Hobbes (Descartes’ contemporary), we see some philosophers who come to reject the notion of “I” simply through a grammatical analysis. The general point of such analyses is that verbs such as “think” require a grammatical subject naturally suggests that there is some “I” (in the first person case) who does the thinking. However, this “I” is merely a schematic convenience, required by ordinary grammar but not representing any real thing. For example, when we say “It is raining,” we neither need nor want to postulate any separate “It” that does the raining. The same case holds good for the “I” (in “I think”). Thus, if we cannot find anything that could properly correspond to the term “I,” we should recognise that this “I” is nothing but a mere schematic convenience.
This is for instance held by Wittgenstein who once considers consciousness as a “particular current experience” to avoid the conceptual approaches, while meanwhile trying to follow Lichtenberg in order to eliminate the self as redundant and instead of “I think” one can say “It thinks” as in “It rains.” 23 This idea that the “I” can be eliminated from our language survived the transition from transcendental to methodological solipsism. 24
Such an approach to the “I” also conflicts commonsense. Common sense rejects this approach, insisting that we (or at least most of us) are in fact somehow aware of our selves throughout our experience, and that the “I” in “I think” is, unlike the “it” in “it is raining,” definitely not at all superfluous. The analysis of the presential cognition seems capable of giving an experiential support to this claim of common sense, and removes such a grammatical approach. It can also enforce the experiential aspects of what such philosophers express. For example, Wittgenstein who rejects the “I”/“self” as redundant, refers to an interesting notion of a double consciousness. 25 The early Wittgenstein seems to consider the deeper level of this consciousness as identified with life and reality. In this stage, consciousness means for him “my current experience,” 26 while holding that “all that is real is the experience of the present moment.”27 Apparently, this notion could be fruitful had it been given an experiential support. Instead, Wittgenstein has criticised himself for his approach28 to this profound idea. Later, rejecting the dichotomy of subject-object (inner-outer) “which has dominated philosophy since Descartes’29 he critically points out that “the picture is something like this: Though the ether is filled with vibrations the world is dark. But one day man opens his seeing eye, and there is light.”30 Wittgenstein conceived “consciousness” “as the ray of light which illuminates our private mental episodes.” 31 Then, it is misleading to look for the essence of consciousness “through turning one’s attention towards one’s own attention. What is needed is an investigation of how the word “consciousness” and its changes are used. Such an investigation reveals that consciousness does not refer to a phenomenon occurring inside us. The alleged ontological split between the physical world and the world of consciousness is merely a categorical difference drawn in our language.” 32
Through his analysis of language and its relation to “thought,” Wittgenstein ends up in a practical interpretation of “consciousness” which remains faithful to his early idea of “current experience”: I am not claming to have knowledge (in its reflective sense) when I say “I am sitting in a chair,” 33 because I am actually aware of this, at the time that I am sitting. There is only a current experience in which “the ego is not an object”.34 Wittgenstein clarified this position more in his analysis of, e.g., seeing and pain. 35 and considers consciousness as “current experience,” as “light,” as well as practical, living “activity.” One may wonder how close he has come to the transcendent approach in this point; however, he could not give his notion an experiential support.
It is interesting also in this context to note that Descartes himself has a similar problematic position. Hobbes objected to Descartes, saying that since we have no inner perception corresponding to the idea of self or soul this idea could only be a mere product of inference. Descartes agreed that “there is no image of the soul fixed in the phantasy.” But he insisted nevertheless that “there is what I call an idea,” something that he was “directly aware of” and which was not “inferred by reason.” 36
“For when we observe that we are conscious beings (res cogitantes), this is a sort of primary notion, which is not the conclusion of any syllogism; and, moreover, when somebody says: I experience (Cogito), therefore I am or exist, he is not syllogistically deducing his existence from an experience (cogitatione), but recognising it as something self-evident, in a simple mental intuition.” 37
“I experience (Cogito) therefore I am. . . this knowledge is no product of your reasoning, no lesson that your masters have taught you; it is something that your mind sees, feels, handles.” 38
Descartes’ experiential language and explicit denial of reliance on reasoning here are thus both unmistakable — even though, as he insists, the experience has nothing of the imagination in it, for any such content would only “reduce the clearness of this knowledge.” 39
VIf. It is easy to see why Descartes’ experiential claims here have not generally had much effect. For in the absence of knowledge of the relevant experiences these claims appear problematic if not simply unintelligible. The transcendent presential cognition, however, allows us to see how the experiential aspects of Descartes’ Meditations can be read literally and intelligibly. 40 We can also note numerous close parallels between Descartes’ explicit narrative experience and the transcendent texts, parallels which indicate clearly that Descartes might helpfully be read here in this transcendent fashion. Consider, for example, the following passages from Descartes’ first three “Meditations”: 41
“I will suppose that sky, air, earth colours, shapes, sounds and all external objects are mere delusive dreams. . .I will consider myself as having no hands, no eyes, no flesh, no blood, no senses.” 42
“Yesterday’s meditation plunged me into doubts of such gravity that I cannot forget them, and yet do not see how to resolve them. I am bewildered, as though I had suddenly fallen into a deep sea, and could neither plant my foot on the bottom nor swim up to the top. But I will make an effort, and try once more the same path as I entered upon yesterday.” 43
The result of being lost in this unbounded sea of doubt was, as Descartes describes in the next two paragraphs of his text, his “discovery” of self, already analysed by us at some length. Descartes then begins his next “Meditation” with a further description of his method:
“I will now shut my eyes, stop my ears, withdraw all my senses; I will even blot out the images of corporeal objects from my consciousness; or at least (since this is barely possible) I will ignore them as vain illusions. I will discourse with myself alone and look more deeply into myself. I am a conscious being.” 44
Descartes then came to recognise that he had an idea of unbounded, “infinite” consciousness, 45 that this idea is “supremely clear and distinct and representationally more real than any other” 46 and is “innate in me, just as the idea of myself is.”47 Descartes, calling this “infinite” consciousness “God,” then concludes his third meditation with the following observations:
“I wish [now] to stay a little in the contemplation of God; to meditate within myself on his attributes; to behold, wonder at, adore the beauty of this immeasurable Light, so far as the eye of my darkened understanding can bear it. . . [T]his contemplation of the Divine Majesty. . . makes us aware that we can get from it the greatest joy of which we are capable in this life.” 48
Thus in his first three “Meditations” Descartes describes (a) generating a pervasive attitude of doubt, (b) withdrawing his attention from external objects, sensations, and sensory-oriented thought, (c) finding himself lost in a “sea” of doubt, (d) discovering his self as consciousness, independent of all imaginable content, (e) locating a completely unbounded level of such consciousness (“God”) as the context and foundation of his own (finite) consciousness, and (f) finding that contemplation of this unbounded level produces incomparable joy.
All six of these points correspond closely with the transcendent literature. They are standard in the practice and performance of the transcendent presential cognition which determines the self as pure presence to being, including even the description of what this school calls “the stage of raising doubt” (maqam al hayrat) from which all meditations start.49 And, more generally, the main features described in Descartes’ account, namely, (i) reversing the direction of attention (away from the senses and sense-oriented thought), (ii) coming to inner experiences of unboundedness (a deep sea, non-picturable consciousness, and infinite non-picturable consciousness), and (iii) gaining an experience of exquisite joy and light in the latter unboundedness, are all standard components of the literature of transcendent experience, in the transcendent school.
The autobiographical nature of these passages is, however, explicit. This interpretation provides the basis for an explanation of how Descartes might properly claim to have a “clear and distinct” intuition of self as unpicturable consciousness independent of all sense-oriented content and thought, 50 even though other investigators such as Hume and Kant could not.51 For as we have seen, the transcendent presential cognition, which uniquely can give clear significance to Descartes’ concept of self, remains unnoticed unless one methodically and radically reorients the direction of one’s attention.
Descartes is usually read by most of Western philosophers in an intellectual context, putting aside exceptions like Husserl. They do not even suggest that they have attempted to do what Descartes described, namely “withdraw” their senses from physical objects and “even blot out the images of corporeal objects” from their consciousness. They have, however, often taken the idea seriously enough to propose what may be called “thought-experiments” in which they attempt to imagine what it would be like to perform the process Descartes described, and then draw conclusions from the imagined result. While thought-experiments can be useful, their results are often far from unambiguous. Two thought-experiments articulated by noted philosophers on the topic in question will illustrate this difficulty. The first was Cinavian; in this thought-experiment Sadra, following Avicenna, asked us to imagine a man created suddenly, floating in empty space, with his various senses either inherently non-functional or having no objects on which to operate. Such a person would nevertheless still be conscious of his own existence. 52 This line of reasoning, however, would not be at all acceptable to Hume. For in thought-experiments of his own Hume argued repeatedly that if all his perceptions were removed he would be “insensible of” himself, and would “truly be said not to exist.” Without any perceptions or impressions, according to Hume, “I should be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is farther requisite to make me a perfect nonentity.” 53
The fact that Hume and Sadra come to such different conclusions from what for our purposes are comparable thought-experiments indicates of course that they had very different intuitions about the nature of the self and the relation of self-knowledge to the contents of ordinary experience. Various responses to their different intuitions and conclusions are possible. Depending on one’s own intuitions about the topic, for example, one might attempt to account for the difference between the positions of Hume and Sadra (and correlatively defend one’s own position) by postulating that one or the other thinker was influenced by hidden verbal and/or commonsensical assumptions. Alternatively, one might postulate that the two thinkers had different degrees of clarity of the experience of “the presential cognition” — just as the theory of a “transcendental self”, in Cartesian, Kantian or Husserlian senses, is so as well.
If we suppose here that it is possible to perform in reality (the phenomenologically relevant aspect of) the imagined thought-experiments, a less hypothetical analysis of this case is possible. For in transcendent practices all the objective contents of experience can frequently fade out and disappear, entirely, leaving the experience of the presential cognition (or in the transcendent mystical terminology, a pure presence to being which is the absolute openness of an absorbed self) by itself, devoid of all sensations and thought, and identifiable as the self.
This experience, as already hinted, has allowed us to corroborate and/or falsify various aspects of modern theories of self. It is worth noting here that while the experience falsifies some of Hume’s (and other later empiricists”) major conclusions about the self, it does so by remaining faithful to Hume’s basic empiricist methodology. Hume emphasised throughout his Treatise that the orientation of his philosophical work was to attempt to apply the “experimental method” to questions of human nature and mind. We can now, it appears, significantly advance this aspect of Hume’s empirically-oriented program by removing at least one important question from the realm of mere thought-experiment through performing the relevant experiment directly. Thus, although the transcendent experience of the presential cognition corroborates aspects of Descartes, Husserl, Kant’s, and other rationalistic theories of self, it does so in accord with empiricist experiential methodology (rather than by abstract a priori arguments).
Thus understood, we may see how much the transcendent experiential theory of the presential cognition can helpfully supply a context in which to unify the apparently conflicting theories of self in modern thought.
Endnotes
Chapter One
1. In this sense subjectivism has formed modernity/modernism as it is the epistemology of modern Western humanism.
2. It would be noted that the usage of the word “subject” changed with modern philosophers headed by Descartes, as its application to human being radically happened in the beginning of modern philosophy.
3. Different interpretations and versions widely spread among thinkers with different (and not necessarily philosophical) socialogistic, theologistic and artistic approaches, ideals and goals. However, those among others must mentioned here in particular is post-structuralistic approaches of Foucault (see specially his “The subject and power” an afterword by him in H.L.Dreyfus and P.Rainbow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, Brighton 1984; also see Smart B, Michel Foucault London 1995)and Derrida (see his of Grammatology, trans.G.Spivak, Baltimore 1976); also see: les fins de l’homme: a partir du travail de Jacques Derrida, Paris 1981) who consider modern subjectivism as a logo-centeral process (which is a special format of modern egoism). Examples of others can be Gilson’s The Unity of Philosophical experience; Schoun’s Spiritual Perspectives; and Guenon’s The reign of the Quantity also Crisis of Modern World.
4. Martin Heidegger, German Philosopher, Maintains that the modern subjectivism started from Descartes; meanwhile, he believes that it already begun by Plato. (For a Detailed discussion see: Rosen S., The Question of Being: A Reversal of Heidegger (London, 1993) esp. Chs. 1, 
Heidegger maintains that Plato’s project ended up with some form of pragmatism. (For a criticism: Rorty R., “Heidegger, Contingency and Pragmatism” in Heidegger: A Critical Reader, ed. H. L. Dreyfus (Oxford, 1992) PP. 204 ff.
5. This is Kant’s well-known thesis; for a serious criticism of this thesis see: Heidegger M., The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. pp. 27 ff.
6. We said so, because one can read Descartes differently; because in his work, Meditations. There are evidences that show his intention could be not what the Post-Cartesian philosophers interpreted.
7. See Barrett W., Death of the Soul: From Descartes to the Computer, Oxford, 1987.
8. See Heidegger’s discussion on Descartes in Being and Time, pp. 123 ff; Also, his Basic Problems Of Phenomenology, pp. 124 ff; See also: Richardson J., Existential Epistemology, Oxford 1986, pp. 80 ff. Also see: Marion J-L., “Heidegger and Descartes’ in: Mccann (ed.), Critical Heidegger (London 1996); Marion tries to show in this article Cartesian traces in Heidegger’s thought.
9. We will not encounter Rorty in our present study. However we mentioned him here to point out that Humean theory of self is still lived not in empiricists only but in a figure like Rorty. For his doctrine see: Rorty R. , Philosophy and the Mirror of the Nature, Princeton 1979, pp. 70 ff; also: his “Commentson Dennett” in Synthese 53 (1982) pp. 181-7.
10. Meditations, in Descartes Philosophical Writings, p. 66.
11. Ibid., p. 67.
12. Ibid., p. 67.
13. Ibid., p. 69.
14. Ibid., p. 70.
15. Ibid., p. 76.
16. Ibid., pp. 121, 117, etc.
17. Ibid., pp. 121, 73, etc.
18. According to Descartes’ reasoning, the self and the contents of imagination and perception are radically different kinds of things. The self is indivisible (there cannot be half an experiencing self for example) while all objects of perception and imagination are divisible. Furthermore the self is logically necessary, while the contents of perception are not, for they can all come and go, the leaving the self intact. Thus, since the self’s existence is so different from and (logically) independent of all such contents, these contents cannot display its true nature. Meditations, p. 70.
19. Ibid., p. 70.
20. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1958) p. xx.
21. Ibid., book I, part I, pp. 1-26
22. Especially Locke’s formulation in his Essay on Human Understanding.
23. Treatise, p. 251
24. Ibid., p. 251.
25. Ibid., p. 252.
26. Ibid., p. 259.
27. Ibid., p. 252.
28. Ibid., p. 251
29. Ibid., p. 259-61.
30. Ibid., p. 259. . But by the time his Treatise was ready for publication he felt constrained to add an “Appendix” stating that he now felt that this account was very defective. He recapitulated those earlier arguments which he still felt to be correct, and then expressed his inability to adequately account for our naturally assumed identity of self by means of collections and relations.
31. Ibid., p. 634.
32. Ibid., p. 635.
33. Ibid., p. 633.
34. Ibid., p. 635.
35 The reference to his earlier theory, already clear from the content of the text, is made explicit in his footnote to the passage quoted above. Ibid., p. 635.
36. Hume, of course, went much further, and offered a variety of additional arguments calling into question our natural assumptions about causality, the nature of physical objects as independent of perceptions, etc. Neither these further inferences, nor the assumptions underlying them, need concern us here however.
37. Ibid., p. 634.
38. Ibid., pp. 635-6.
39. Suppose (i) it is possible to define oneself in terms of some collection of perceptions, and some relation R specifying the conditions which possible perceptions must fulfil in order to be a member of this collection. (ii) If R specifies any conditions at all (that is, if R is non-vacuous) there must be possible perceptions P which do not fulfil these conditions. (iii) But since R (supposedly) defines oneself, it is logically impossible for one to have the perception P. (iv) But, as we saw above, there is no possible perception P which one cannot conceive of the logical possibility of having oneself. (v) Therefore R cannot be significantly defined, for it cannot properly exclude any logically possible perception, and it therefore cannot be used to define oneself.
The argument can also be formulated as follows: (i) Suppose R defines (non-vacuously) those perceptions that can be one’s own. (ii) Then there exists some possible perception P which R excludes. (iii) Since P is a possible perception one (logically) could have it. (iv) But then one would be having a perception that was not one’s own (by (i) and (ii)). This is absurd, and our supposition that there can be some (non-vacuous) relation R capable of defining one’s self by specifying the collection perceptions proper to it is false.
40. Many candidates for such relations have been suggested, including Hume’s contiguity and resemblance, and various sorts of memory-relations. See, for example, William James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1.I (New York, Dover Publications, Inc., 1950) Chapter X, and Paul Grice, “Personal Identity,” Mind, Vol. I, No. 200, Oct. 1941.
41. We should note again that this analysis says nothing at all about whether, given the laws of the universe we actually live in, such experiences are possible in actual fact. Its purpose is only to display the relation of relations (R) and their excluded perceptions (p) to our basic concepts of self, and it concerns itself only with logical and not with factual possibility.
we can also note that contemporary linguistic philosophers often argue that we cannot in fact even imagine experiencing independently of association with our body, and they offer sophisticated linguistic arguments to support this claim. However on all ordinary usage of the “imagine” (and its cognates in other languages throughout history) this claim is simply false.
42. Ibid., p. 636.
43. Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics (Indianapolis & New York, Library of Liberal Arts, Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1950) p. 8.
44. Immanuel Kant Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith, Macmillan & Co. Ltd. , New York; 964, pp. 42-4. One point may be mentioned here: The transcendentalisation of the self is officially raised by Kant and took up by his followers in post-kantian period. For a short study see: Solomon R. C., Continental Philosophy since 1750: The Rise and The Fall of The Self, Oxford 1990, Parts One And Nine.
45. Ibid., pp. 22-3, 42, etc.
46. Ibid., p. 152.
47. Ibid., p. 155.
48. Ibid., pp. 197, 207, etc.
49. Ibid., p 131.
50. Ibid., pp. 141-2, 335.
51. Ibid., p. 141-2
52. Ibid., p. 136.
53. Ibid. pp. 152-3.
54. Ibid., pp. 329-30, 332-3, 153, etc.
55. Ibid., p. 331.
56. Indeed, the two chapters on the self in his Critique of Pure Reason, comprising about one-tenth of the whole volume, were the only ones, aside from the preface, that Kant felt constrained to rewrite extensively for the second edition of the work.
57. Ibid. p. 337.
58. Ibid. pp. 332-3.
59. Ibid., p. 131.
60. Ibid., p. 329.
61. Ibid., p. 153.
62. Ibid., p. 154.
63. “. . . time is represented, strictly speaking, only in me. “Ibid., p. 342. Thus the self itself is somehow both outside of and independent of time as its container and precondition. Space is analysed in a similar fashion.
64. Ibid., p. 382.
65. Ibid., p. 366
66. Ibid., p. 337-40, 369-70
67. Ibid., p. 340
68. Ibid., p. 370
69. Ibid., p. 327
70. Ibid., p. 380.
71. Ibid., p. 382.
72. Ibid., p. 328.
73. For a discussion on Husserl’s transcendental self/ego see: Kockelmans J. J., Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology, (Indiana, 1994), pp. 261-8; See also: Solomon, Continental Philosophy, Part Nine.
74. Cartesian Meditations, p. 83
75. Ibid. p. 83
76. Ibid., p. 69
77. Ibid., p. 21
78. Ibid., p. 99
79. Ibid. pp. 22-3
80. See: Spigelberg, Phenomenological Movement, p. 125
81. Ideas, p.
82. Ricoeur P. , Husserl, Ch. 3, “Husserl’s Ideas II”, p. 52 ff.
83. see: Ibid., “Kant and Husserl”, pp. 175 ff.
84. Cartesian Meditations.
85. Ibid. parag. 30, p. 65
86. See Ibid., Meditation 5, parag. 42
87. see: Ibid., parag. 40-1; also parag. 81-8
88. Ibid., p. 86; for a discussion on transcendental Idealism in Phenomenology see: Philips H., “transcendental Idealism” in Cambridge companion To Husserl; Also: Kockelman, Op. Cit. pp. 269 ff.
89. Ibid., p. 30
90. See: Ibid., med. 2, 4; Also: Ricoeur, Husserl, p. 107
91. Ibid. pp. 18-21
92. treatise, p. 633
93. Rene Guenon (1886-1951), Muslim philosopher, who was born and educated in France where he studied mathematics, was severely critical of all that is called modern thought that he tends to refute completely. He was also thoroughly critical of modern science and established a new critical school concerning modern thought and civilisation to which Schoun were to point later. He deeply was looking for a solution in Hinduism writing some valuable book concerning it. However, finally he openly embraced Islam, migrated to Cairo, lived in a traditional house leaving his modern Western life and thought. In this period (thirty years) his best works came up among which we may mention here Crisis of Modern World and The reign of Quantity and The Sign of The Times. For more detail on his work and life see: Marcireau, Rene Guenon et Son Oeuvre, Paris 1946.
94. A safe way to fill the gap should supply this need; This may be clearer through our following discussion.
Chapter Two
1. Concerning Sadra in English see: Nasr H., Sadr al-Din Shirazi: His Transcendent Theosophy(Tehran 1978); Also Morris J.W. “An Introduction to the Philosophy of Sadra” in his translation of Sadra’s The Wisdom of the Throne. Fakhry M., History of Islamic Philosophy.,pp339-370 For more bibliography on Sadra in European languages see: Nasr,Op.Cit.pp.99-100.
2. See: Ibn Sina, Mantiq al-Mashreghyyin, ”Introduction”.
3. Concerning Suhrawardi in English see: Nasr s.H., Three Muslim Sages, ch.II; Nasr H.,” Suhrawardi” in MM. Sharif (ed), A History of Muslim Philosophy; Ziaii H., Suhrawardi,Unpublished PhD Dessertation, Harward 1976; Netton I.R., Allah transcendent, Ch.6. Corbin H., History Of Islamic Philosophy, trans.L.Sherrard (London1993), Ch.VII,pp.205-220; Iqbal, Development Of Metaphysics In Persia,(London 1908) Ch.V; Fakhry M., A History Of Islamic Philosophy,(NJ 1970), Ch7,pp.325-339. In French, see: three prolegomena of H. Corbin to Suhrawardi’s Opera Metaphysica et Mystica, v.I, II, III (Tehran 1976-7); Also, Corbin H., En Islam Iranien,V.II, (Paris 1972); also Corbin H., Suhrawardi, l’ Archange Empoure, (Paris 1976).
4. Concerning the notion of “Light” see Suhrawardi’s Hickman al-Ishraq, and his Hayakil al-Noor; also see Ghazali’s Meshkat al-Anvar.
5. Al Hekma al-Mota’aliyah fi l-Asfar al-‘Aqliyyah al-Arbah.ed.by S.M.H. Tabatabaii,Tehran 1983 (Hereafter Asfar); for a discription of this book in English see: Nasr,Op.Cit.,pp.55-69
6. The doctrine of Sayr wa sulook is in the transcendent literature considered as a practical manner for making the self purified. The intellectual indication of this manner in Sadra’s work puts a new attitude forward that in this research is to be reconstructed. .
7. I said “extract”, because our description of the transcendent method has not been discussed in this form of presentation and classification as yet. We try to bring up the novel aspect of this method which is hidden in the transcendent literature; thus, we extract it.
8. Farber M., Basic Issues In Philosophy (NY,1968),p.39
9. Farber M., Naturalism and Subjectivism,pp.383-84
10. For a description of these journeys in English see: Nasr, Op. Cit.. It must mention here that transcendental philosophy though uses the method of reduction however it is not a philosophy of reductionism.
11.Since so far as I know the word “ontetic” is used for first time, the reason should, then, be explained here. As hinted and will be seen in detail, there is a reduction in the transcendent method to Being which in my best knowledge has no correspondence in modern philosophy. Since I could not find a proper word in English to indicate the special sense of this reduction as supposed by transcendent philosophy, I would make this word,”ontetic”, drived from the Greek “ontos” meaning pure being, in comparison with Husserl’s “eidetic”, drived from the Greek “eidos” meaning pure essence [see: Ideas, pp.59-61 and 55-67].I also use “ontetic”, neither “ontic” nor “ontologic”, to avoid any confusion with Heideggerean sense of these words.
12. Asfar, V.I, p.12
13. This beginningless symbolized in their emphasis on Tawbah meaning return and Tazkiyah meaning Purification. This is seriously recommended in transcendent philosophy to do Tawbah and Tazkiyah before starting any philosophizing. See, for example, Sadra’s advice in Asfar’s Introduction.
14. Sadra, Mafatih al ghayb,trans. M.Khajavi,Tehran, 1988, p.139
15. Sadra, Asfar,V.I, p.11
16. Sadra, Asfar V.III.
17. Western orientalists and the previous writers are perhaps to be excused for their failure to recognize the relevance and modernity of this particular method of transcendent school. Despite their erudition and exacting scholarship, scholars such as Gauthier and MacDonald failed to discern this method, possibly because of their predominant interest in history and culture and not in philosophy as such.
18. There are various techniques in the transcendent mysticism by which such a thing is possible.
19. Hume, Treatise, Book I. ”Of the Understanding”, pp.45-81,133-9, 205-23
20. This is obvious especially if we consider the practical, mystical aspect of this school. The phrase “Khal” ul-Na’layn” used in their language indicates that we should give up in first instance our knowledge bracketing our ratio to freshly restart.
21. Descartes, Meditations, p.17
22. ibid,pp.23-44
23. Phenomenological Movement, p.77; See also: Pivcevic E., Husserl and Phenomenology, pp.11-21, 34ff.
24. Cartesian Meditations,p.5-7
25. See Husserl E.,Idea of Phenomenology, Lecture 2; also, Hammond M and others, Understanding Phenomenology,(oxford,1991) pp.1-3; also,Kockelman J.J., Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology, PP.118-127,137-9.
26. See below.
27. See Sadra, Asfar,V.III.
28. ibid, pp.62-3
29..See.below.
30. See Sadra Asfar “Introduction”;This ideal is commonly reminded through the transcendent texts.
31. See Asfar V.I
32. Farber , Basic Issues In Philosophy, New York,1968,p.116
33. Compare these two senses with Heidegger’s first and third senses of essence as described in: Griedev A.,” What did Heidegger mean by “Essence”“, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, V.19,no.1,Jan.1988, pp.64-89
34. Asfar,V.I, pp.56-8, 243-5
35. Ibid., 262-326
36. Ibid., pp.245ff, 75ff
37. ibid, 245-59; also V.III, pp.275-77
38. ibid,V.I,p.;V.II,pp.35ff
39. ibid, V.I, pp.265-7
40. For a discussion on Husserl see Kockelmans,Op.Cit.,pp.118-127,206-327;also see: Phenomenological Movement,pp.679ff. Of course it must be mentioned here that Sadra also leads to a Hermeneutic science of Higher apprehension or mystical consciousness (Irfan), however, it is not the same as Husserl’s Eidetic Science.
41. Sadra,Mafatih,p.139
42. Ideas,p.155
43. See Mafatih al-ghayb pp. 287-291also Asfar V.
44. This is an evidence for Husserl’s saying(Crisis) that phenomenological method has been used by philosopher before him. For a discussion on this saying see Gorwich A. Psychology and Phenomenology, pp.
45. Husserl, Phenomenology in Encyclopaedia Britannica see: Kocklemans, Husserl’s Phenomenology, Nijhof 1996.
46. That the phenomenological tendency lends itself to such a mystical interpretation is attested by the work of Edith Stein, Husserl’s student, in On The Problem Of Empathy [The Hague,1964] and by the opinions of other specialists on the subject.[see Farber m.,The Aimes of Philosophy,NY,1966,p.11)
47. Husserl, Phenomenology
48. Ideas, pp 235-57, pp.56-7,156-67
49. Ricoeur, Husserl, p.190
49+1) See Kockelmans, Op.Cit.,pp.137-9
50. Fink E.," l' analyse intentionelle et le problem de la pense speculative" in Problemes Actuals de la Phenomenologie,ed.by H.L.Van Berda, Brussel 1952,p.68; qouted in Farber, Naturalism and Subjectivism,p.240
51. Ideas para.15
52. Idea of Phenomenology, lecture 2
53. Ideas, parag.15
53+1) For a discussion on the transcendental phenomenology and ontology see: Kockelmans, Op. Cit., pp.246ff, esp. 254-7, 281ff.Also see: Pivcevic, Op.Cit., pp.102-111
54. Farber M, Naturalism, p.240
55. Heidegger ,Being and Time,p.21
56. “Letter on Humanism” in Basic Writings, ed. D.F.Krell (London 1993)p.258
57. Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology, p.20
58. ibid. p.21
59. Being and Time, p32
60. ibid.
61. ibid,34
62. ibid, 35
63. See Heidegger M., The Question of Being,trans. J.T.Wild & W.Kluback (New Haven,1958) esp. pp.74ff.
64. Farber, Naturalism,pp.240-1
65. Being and Time, p.63
66..See Husserl’s marginals, transcribed by Husserl Archives of Louvain, qouted by Farber, Naturalism, p.364
67. See: What is Metaphysics? in Basic Writings,pp.89-111 .
68. Olafson maintains that in later Heidegger’s works, it is Being that grounds the presence (i.e., Dasein). See: his book Heidegger and the Philosophy of Mind.
69. Being and Time, p.19
70. Asfar,V.I,Part 1,Ch.1
71. Heidegger,Basic Problems,”Introduction”
72. Asfar,V.I,Part 1
73.Asfar,v.6 .Compare Heidegger" Every being has a way-of-being"[Basic Problems, p.18]
74. Basic problems p.16
75. ibid “introduction” esp. 19ff.
76. ibid,p.23
77. The similarities between Heidegger and Sadra do not prove that their aims of returning to Being is the same; Sadra has a mystical aim in head, but Heidegger seems not definitely to have . On his relation to Mysticism see: Macquarrie J.,Heidegger and Christianity, (London 1994),pp.117-121
78. Asfar, I,pp.263ff
79. One can say here that Heideggerian deconstruction is deconstruction of subjectivism; if so it is similar to Sadraean task of deconstruction of subjectivism; the difference is that Heidegger acts through analysis of history of Western thought but Sadra acts through analysis and rejection of the essentialism which according to him is the ideology if subjectivism.
80. Asfar,V.I,p.37
81. ibid., p.103
82. See ibid., V.I
83. ibid., V.II,p.35
84. ibid., p.36
Chapter Three
1. Al Hekma al-Mota’aliyah fi’l-Asfar al-Aqliyyah al-Arbah.ed.by S.M.H. Tabatabaii, Tehran 1983
2. Mudhaffar’s “Introduction” to Asfar, V.I, p.6
3. Asfar,v.8, p343
4. Ibid.,I, p.20
5. Sadra, Sharh al Usul al Kafi, ed. Khajavi,Tehran 1985,p.90. It must be mentioned here that Sadra holds that the self access to and may possess all gradation of perfection which stand under his divinic authority (God’s Caliph) through generating in an existential process of the substantive movement. He has discussed all ontological, psychological and epistemological aspects of this thesis in detail.(See for example: Asfar Vols. 8-9). Since we are in this study confined to the preontological aspect of the self, we only consider the self in its final humanitic state, that is what Sadra calls “Discursive self” or the logos of the self (al-nafs al-natiqah) (see ibid, V.8, 260ff) the nature of which is the presential cognition.
6. Heidegger M., Being and Time, trans. J.Macqurrie and Robinson, Oxford 1988, p.78
7. The official term used almost by Sadra is ” ‘ilm hudhuri (shuhudi or ishraqi)”( Asfar, V.III ,pp.447ff). Perhaps, the phrase,”the presential cognition” is the best to convey the content of its meaning. As we will see soon in this chapter, this word has no eidetic, reflective or intentional for our employment of this word here in the transcendent context.
8. Sadra, Shawahid, ed. Ashtiyani, Tehran 1983, p.200
9. ibid, p.172, 157-8
10. Asfar,V.III,p.297; see also: p.382
11. ibid,pp.278-9
12. Ibid., 280ff
13. Sabzewari note no.2 in: Ibid.,p.466
14. Rosental David M., “Two Concepts of Consciousness” in Philosophical Studies 94, 3 (May1986): 329-59, Section II. This distiction easily includes other distinctions probably maked by contemporary philosophies of mind (e.g. Block’s “access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness” or Kim’s “subject consciosness and state consciousness”, etc.)
15. Cf. Searl J., The Rediscovery of the Mind, Cambridge 1992, ch.4; also Nagel T. “Subjective and Objective” in his Mortal Questions, cambridge 1979; in this work, Nagel introduce subjectivity as basic feature of consciousness and assigns the essential characteristic of “point of view” to it; see ibid, p.210; see also Chisolm R.M., The First Person, Minneapolice 1981, ch.3; perhaps it is clear that such concepts of consciousness refer to self-consciousness rather than to consciousness itself. (see Chalmers D., The Conscious Mind).
16. Cf. Freud Z., The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, tran. J. Strachey, London 1966-74, The Ego and the Id, XIX:3-68, pp. 22-3
17. ibid, “The Unconscious”, XIV: 166-215, p.168
18. ibid, “some elementary lessons in psycho-analysis”, XXIII: 279-86,p. 282
19. Asfar, V.III,p.465-87
20. Ibid.,p.465
21. Ibid., p.466
22. See: Shawahid pp. 242ff; also Asfar,V.III, p.312ff; also Sadra’s treatise on ittehaad al-’aqel wa al m’aquul,in his Rasa’il.
23. Asfar,V.II, pp.339-43
24. Asfar, journey I, Part 3, p. 313
25. See Tabatabaii, Usul i Falsafa va Ravesh i Realism, ed. M. Mutahhari, Article 4. Also In this respect we may emphasis that in this notion of consciousness there is no room for any distinction at all including the epistemological ones (e.g. knowledge by “conception” and knowledge by “belief“) and linguistic ones (e.g. The first person and third person) or psychological ones (e.g. unconscious and conscious acts).
26. Asfar, V. I, pp. 264-8
27. Sadra writes:
“No particular sense-perception or phenomenal state of mind, even though in the form “I”, can ever bear witness to the truth value of the existence of myself. This is because any phenomenal event which I attribute to myself, such as my feeling cold or warmth, or pain etc., must be, and is presupposed by an underlying awareness of myself. With this underlying awareness can I appropriate cold, warmth, pain, pleasure, etc., to myself. If I suffer from severe cold weather, or escape from the flame of a burning fire, it is only because I already am aware of something which, in one way or another, belongs to myself. This is true in doubting, thinking, believing, etc. Thought, doubt, or belief, in general, can ever be appropriated to myself, nor can they be a subsisting phenomena in myself. But as particularly applied to my self possessed by myself in terms of my own thought, doubt, or belief, it involves the underlying awareness of myself. This is the case no matter how the reality of the self is to be understood, and how the problem of identity is to be handled by philosophy.” (Asfar, Journey I, part3, vol I.) and, “Were it the case that I, through my own action, whether it is intellectual or physical could become aware of myself, it be as if I should bring forth from myself evidence to bear witness to myself. It would obviously be a vicious circle in which the knowledge of my action functions as a cause of my knowledge of myself which is itself already implied in, and serves as the cause of the knowledge of my own action.” (ibid)
28. See Asfar V. I, pp. 221-230
29. Cf. Anscombe, Mind and Language, ed. S. Guttenplan, Oxford 1975; specially pp.45-65
30. Gurwitch A.,”A Non-egological Conception of Consciousness” in Glynn S. (ed), Sartre: An Investigation of Some Major Themes , (Averbury 1987).
31. A point should be remind here: Heidegger unlike Sartre does not like to use the term “Consciousness”. In explaining why he does so, see; Olafson, Heidegger and the philosophy of Mind,(New Haven,1987)pp,14, 262 n.20. For Sartre: Gorwitch A., A Non-Egological Consciousness.; For Heidegger’s influences on Sartre see: Rockmore, Heidegger and French Philosophy(London 1995) Ch. 3,pp. 40-58
32. Like Sadra, Sartre similarly denies the transcendentalising the self or the ego in its “primitive” status, even in phenomenological analysis. For Sartre’s theory of the self see specially his book Transcendence of Ego, trans. Williams, New York 1957.For more discussion see also: “Sartre on the Ego” in Glynn (ed.), Sartre, pp.1-21; also: Solomon, Continental Philosophy since 1750 (oxford 1990), Part 12 .
33. See Sartre,” consciousness of self and knowledge of self” in Readings in Existential Phenomenology, ed. N. Lawrence & D. O’Connor (NJ 1967) pp.113-142; See also: Danto A.C., Sartre,(London 1991), Ch.2, pp.35-70
34. For Rorthy see his book: Philosophy and the mirror of Naturep. 70ff; for Faucoult and Derrida see: Solomon R. C., Continental Philosophy Since 1750: The Rise and The Fall of The Self, Oxford 1990, “Supplement: The End Of The Self”.
35. Sartre J. P. , Being And Nothingness, trans. H. Barnes, New York 1966,p. ixi
36. Asfar, v, I, pp.78-82
37. ibid,V.III, pp.312ff
38. Being and Nothingness, pp. 559-60
39. Ibid., p. 568
40. Ibid.
41. Asfar, V. 8, pp. 221-230
42. Ibid., pp. 11, 325-380
Chapter Four
1. Asfar, V. 8, pp. 343-380
2. Descartes has presented his doctrine of mind-body in his several works; for example see: Meditations in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. J. Cottingham, R.Stoohoff, and D. Morduch, 2 vol., Cambidge 1985, Vol.1 pp.195-6, 204-5, 216-19; vol.2, pp.16-23, 51-4, 56-61, and 171-72; also see his letters to Elizabeth (28 june 1643), in Philosophical Letters, trans. A. Kenny, Oxford 1970, pp.141-43.
3. Ryle G., The Concept of Mind, London 1949, Ch.1, pp.11-24
4. Though contemporary analytical philosophy of mind is by nature implies some kind of reductionism, the specific term of “Reductionism” is of E. Nagel in his The Structure of Science, NY 1961; see also Patricia S. churchland, Neurophilosophy, Cambridge 1986. Reductionism has also two other versions: Token physicalism (cf. Davidson D. Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford 1980) and Type physicalism (cf. Armstrong D. A Materialistic Theory of Mind, NY 1968; see also Hill C.S., Sensations: A Defense of Type Physicalism, Cambridge,1991)
5. Behaviourism has three versions: logical (cf. Carl Hempel,“ The Logical Analysis of Psychology” in Block N. (ed), Readings in Philosophy of Psychology, v.1, Cambridge 1980), philosophical (cf. Ryle G.,The Concept of Mind, Op.cit., also see Armstrong D.M., and Malcolm N., Consciousness and Causality, Oxford 1984) and scientific (cf. Skinner B.F., Science and Human Behavior,NY1953)
6. Risen from criticisms of behaviorism and specially reductionalistic theories of identity, functionalism has two major versions both of which evoked by Hilary Putnam and followed by others: Computational (cf., Putnam H., Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers, vol.2, Cambridge,1975; see also: Block N., Readings in Philosophy of Psychology, vol.1) and causal- theoretical (cf., Putnam H., Representation and reality, Cambridge, 1988; see also: Sear J.R. The Rediscovery of the Mind, Cambridge,1992)
7. cf., Broad F.C., The Mind and its Place in the World, London 1962; see also: Beckermann and others (ed), Emergence or reduction? (Berlin 1992)
8. Meditations,
9. Ibid.
10. Sadra, Asfar, V.8 pp.7; also 8ff Sadra interoperates this classic definition of the mind on his existential/ontetic fundamentals. For the mind’s substantiality see Ibid pp.23ff and for its simplicity see pp.287ff; he brings about 14 reasons this.
11. Ibid,V.2,p.185;
12. For Sadra’s detailed discussions on this issue and the principles we mention here see his Asfar V.8 (also 9 and 3) also Al mabda’ wal ma’ad ‘Fi Isbat Annannafsal Insaaniyyah Haadesaton Bi Hodousel Badan’; see also Sabzevari’s Sharhol Manzoumah, Maqsad4, Fareedah6. Sadra brings about at least six arguments to demonstrate this docrine.
13. Asfar,V.2,p.268
14. Shawaheid (Mahdad1346 HS),p.95
15. Mafateeh[Tehran,lito.] pp.128-32/Asfar,V.2.,pp.223-43
16. Asfar, V.4, pp. 21, 60-3
17. Ibid, V.8 p 221: EnnaNNafsa Fi Wahadatihaa Kollol Ghowa. see also: Shabzevari’s Manzoumah P.314
18. See Ibid, p.114ff
19. Asfar, V. 8, p. 11, 345-6
20. Ibid., p. 347
21. Ibid. , p. 345-7
22. Ibid., pp. 155-204
23. Ibid., 325-330
24. Ibid., p. 221 ff
25. We have extracted this by reading Sadra’s theory of Soul-Body in the context of his discussion of singularity (Tashakhkhus) (Asfar, v. II, pp. 10-16)
26. Compare our following discussion with the existential phenomenological approaches. See for example: Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. C. Smith (London 1981), Part I, Ch. 3; also see: De Waelhens A. , “The Phenomenology of Body, in Reading in Existential Phenomenology, pp. 149-167
27. Being and Nothingness, p. 305
28. Ibid., p. 310
29. Ibid., p. 304
30. Ibid., p. 308
31. Ibid., pp. 309-310
32. For Descartes see his Meditations on First Philosophy, Meditations II, and VI; for his contemporary critics on his substantival view of the mind see Ryle G., The Concept of Mind, (london 1949) ch1,pp.11-24;also Anscombe G, Mind and Language, (London 1975) pp. 45-65 and Rorty A.(ed), Essays on Descaters’ Meditations (Ca 1986)
33. See Huxley T., Methods and Results: Essays (NY 1975) ch5; see also; Armstrong D. and Malcolm N. (ed), Consciousness and Causality(oxford 1984) and Skinner, Science and Human behaviour (NY 1953), also Hempel C., ‘ The Logical Anaysis of Psychology’ in Ned Block’s Readings in Philosophy of Psychology, V.I; J.J.Smart,’Sensations and Brain Processes’ in Rosental’s The Nature of Mind; Armstrong D.,A Materialist Theory of Mind (NY1968), and Macdonald C., Mind-Body Identity Theories (london 1989)
34. See Shomaker S., Identity, Cause and Mind (Cambidge 1984); Searl J., The Rediscovery of the Mind (Camb 1992); also see kim’s ‘Multiple Realization and the Metaphysics of Reduction’ in his Supervenience and Mind (Camb.1993)
35. See Davidson D., Essays on Actions and Events (NY1980), and his Mental Causation (Oxford 1993)
36. See LePore E. and Loewer B., ‘Mind Matters’ Journal of Philosophy84(1987):630-642
37. For Supervenient causation see Kim’s Op.Cit. also C&G Mackdonald, ‘Introduction: Supervenient Causation’ in their Philosophy of Psychology(oxford 1995)
38. Concerning Sadra’s concept of causation see Ibid, V.I, pp. 131ff,145ff;194ff; 257ff
39. Sadra classifies six types of temporal cause; see Ibid., pp.213,220,223-6
40. Sadra’s position is expanded throughout his detail discussions on various aspects of the mind;Cf. Ibid,Vols.8,9
Chapter Five
1. Cf. Correspondences with Arnold.
2. Cartesian Meditations, pp. 65, parag. 30
3. Ricoeur, Husserl, pp. 157-59, 191
4. Being and Time, pp. 151-2
5. Asfar, V. III, pp. 292 ff; 344 ff; Also Mafatyh, pp. 283-287
6. Mafatyh, p. 286
7. Being and Time, 252
8. Ibid., p. 493, note xvi.
9. Tabatabaii, “Usul i Falsafa, Article 5, p. 190; See Mutahhari’s note no. 2.
10. Asfar, V. I, (wojoud zihni)
11. Ibid., v. III, (Mabahith al-’Aql wa al-’ilm); also see Ibid. , V. 8.
12. This does not indicate that the presential cognition is a priori in Kantian formal sense, nor does it imply such a theory of innate Ideas in Cartesian rationalistic sense. As we have already seen, it is our being and thus supplies an existential background for interpreting those subjectivistic theories. (see also, Asfar, V. III, pp. 443 ff. )
13. See Asfar, V. I, pp. 264-8
14. Asfar, V. III, pp. 312 ff.
15. Our description of scepticism, solipsism and idealism depicts their general spirit as commonly understood in modern philosophy. There are, however, different versions, expressions and formulations for these terms depended on the peculiar angle from which the cases are seen
16. Can we not understand this theory as a basis to interpret Leibnizian Harmony, Husserlian Intersubjectivity, and Wittgensteinian thesis of common usage of the words in public language — all elaborated to escape from solipsism, scepticism and idealism — in this transcendent context?
17. Justification of this is beyond our aims here; for a philosophical approach to this issue see Hayeri Yazdi M., Knowledge by Presence (Tehran 1982)
18. Asfar, V. 8, pp. 221 ff.
19. Bertrand Russell, “Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description,” reprinted in Mysticism and Logic (New York, Norton & Co, 1929) p. 210; Also see his Problems of Philosophy, Ch. 5
20. ibid, p. 224.
21. Bertrand Russell, “On the Nature of Acquaintance,” reprinted in Logic & Knowledge, Essays 1901-1950, R. C. March editor (London, Allen & Unwin, Ltd. , 1956) p. 164.
22. Bertrand Russell, “On Propositions: what they are and how they mean, in Logic and Knowledge, Essays 1901-1950, p. 305, see also, “On Acquaintance,” in the same volume, p. 276.
23. Cf. Wittgenstein L. Philosophical Remarks, tran.R.Hargreaves and R. White, oxford, 1975; see also Glock H-J., A Wittgenstein’s Dictionary,(Oxford 1996), The term: I/Self, and Intentionality.
24. See C.S. Chihara and J.A.Fodor, “Operationalism and Ordinary Language: A Critique of Wittgenstein” in American Philosophical Quarterly II, 4, pp. 281-95; also J.A.Fodor, “Methodological Solipsism Considered as a Research Strategy in Cognitive Psychology” in The Behavioral and Brain Sciences III 1,pp. 63-72
Some other linguistic philosophers are also more or less on this way; the eliminative materialism advanced by Feyerabend (“Mental Events and the Brain” in The Journal of Philosophy LX, 11,pp.295-96)and Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature,ch.2) and modified by Quine (Cf. “States of Mind” in The Journal of Philosophy LXXXII, 1(1985)pp.5-8) tries to adopt a language devoid of mental terminology. There are others like P.F. Strawson who wants to replace “self” with “person”.
25. See Horgby’s article in: Durfee H.A. (ed.), Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology, (The Hague 1976), pp.96-125
26. Glock H-J., A Wittgenstein’s Dictionary,(Oxford 1996), The term:” Consciousness”, pp.84-86
27. ibid
28. For Wittgenstein’s “solipsism,” see: ibid pp.348-352
29. ibid p.84; see also: ibid, pp.174-179
30. Quoted in ibid, p.84
31. ibid
32. ibid
33.See: Hanfling O., Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy, (London 1989), Ch.2, pp.152 ff.
34. Tractatus, 5.641
35. See: Genova J., Wittgenstein: A Way Of Seeing, (New York 1995), Ch.2 “Don’t Think, Look!” pp.55-92; Also part three, pp.135 ff.
36. Descartes’ Philosophical Writings, pp. 139, 142, 136.
37. Ibid. , p. 299.
38. Ibid. , p. 301, from a letter to The Marquis of Newcastle.
39. Ibid. , p 301.
40. It is interesting to see that Descartes is read in a supportive and similar (not of course transcendent) manner by M. Gueroult and M. Grene; See M. Grene, Descartes (Sussex 1985) esp. pp.3-23
41. Meditations, p. 65.
42. Meditations. p.65
43. Ibid. p. 66.
44. Ibid. p. 76.
45. For, according to Descartes, awareness of (himself as a) “finite” consciousness presumes awareness of “infinite” consciousness as its context and condition of intelligibility. For the concept of “finite” is only intelligible in its contrast with that of “infinity. “ Ibid., p. 86.
46. Ibid., pp. 85-7. Descartes’ arguments here are often complex, contain scholastic elements, and (to modem readers at least) often appear quite unconvincing. Our present concern, however, is only with the phenomenological significance of his statements, and not the validity of his arguments or truth of his conclusions.
47. Ibid. , p. 90.
48. This can de found in all traditional texts of the transcendent mysticism, for example see: Bahr al-’Alum, Resala i Sayr va Sulouk, ed. Hosaini (Tehran, 1984).
49. Ibid, p 91.
50. The above literal reading of Descartes in the context of transcendent school also makes a number of his other claims much more understandable. These include (I) his claim to have an idea of unbounded consciousness (“God”), 2 his claim that this idea and that of self are the two most “clear and distinct” Ideas that he has, and that they are both innate, and 3 that he experienced “light” and great bliss in the contemplation of this “idea” of God. The fact that such a subjective mode of experience exist of course says nothing about the objective truth of its contents, but the supposition that Descartes may have had this experience might make his insistence on his doctrine of clear and distinct Ideas somewhat easier to understand.
51. Both Hume and Kant kept open at least the logical possibility of experience that could fulfil the otherwise rejected notion of self. Hume allows the possibility that someone else might be able to conceive of a notion of self existing entirely without perceptions, but adds: “I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular” (Treatise, p. 252). Kant allows the logical possibility of experience of “noumena” such as the self completely independent of all perceptions, but he maintains that it is impossible for us as human beings not only to have but even adequately to conceive of such experience. (Critique of Pure Reason, p. 157. See also pp. 90, 164, 250, etc. )
52. This thought experience is first articulated by Ibn Sina, al-Shifa” [De Anima], V. I, p. 281, and used by many philosophers including Sadra. Copleston describes Avicenna’s thought-experiment as follows: “Imagine a man suddenly created, who cannot see or hear, who is floating in space and whose members are so disposed that they cannot touch one another. On the supposition that he cannot exercise the senses and acquire the notion of being through sight or touch, will he thereby be unable to form the notion? No, because he will be conscious of and affirm his own existence, so that, even if he cannot acquire the notion of being through external experience, he will at least acquire it through self-consciousness. “(A History of Philosophy, V. II, Part I, p. 216. See also: Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, vol. 1, pp. 228.
53. Treatise, p. 252. See also pp. 634-5.
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About Author
Mahmoud Khatami [BA, MA, Mth, PhD (Iran) and DPhil (England)] teaches continental philosophy, philosophy of mind and metaphysics at the University of Tehran. Amongst his recent works are Heidegger’s Notion of the World (winner of year book prize, Iran 2001), Sadraean Meditations and Phenomenology of Religion.
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