An Analytical Evaluation of the Philosophical Criticisms Arisen Against “The Rule of the One (Qaʿidah Al-Wahid)” with an Emphasis on the Foundations of Transcendent Philosophy

Document Type : Scientific-research

Authors

1 Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran (corresponding author

2 Doctoral student of Hikmat Ta'alaeh, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran

Abstract

“The Rule of the One (Qaʿidah Al-Wahid)” is a significant and widely used philosophical rule which has originated from Greek philosophy, and many Muslim philosophers, such as Ibn Sina, Surawardi and Mulla Sadra, have paid attention to it. In spite of the wild reception of this rule in Islamic Philosophy, some Muslim Mutakallimun (Theologians) have criticized this rule from a Kalami (Theological) perspective. At the same time, despite the fact that some Muslim philosophers have considered the Rule of the One as a self-evident rule, some contemporary scholars of philosophy have rejected this rule by a philosophical approach, and have known it as incompatible with some philosophical foundations. In this paper, I have tried to classify, analyze and evaluate, by a descriptive-analytical method, the philosophical criticisms arisen against the Rule of the One. The findings of this paper show that these criticisms can generally be classified in two main kinds of criticism: the first kind is related to the criticisms which have been arisen against the reasons for the Rule of the One, and in which those reasons have been considered as insufficient for proving this rule; and the second kind is related to the criticisms which, apart from the reasons for proving the Rule of the One, have considered this rule as incompatible with some other philosophical rules. At the end, I have concluded that in most of the philosophical criticisms arisen against the Rule of the One, we can see two kinds of error: “the confusion between the Concept and the Extension”; and presenting an incorrect and inaccurate image of the philosophical premises of the Rule of the One, such as “the principle of congruence”, “the impossibility of production of the simultaneous effects from a simple agent”, and “the necessity of differentiation between cognitive and objective multiplicity”.

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References

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