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Wujūd, brahman, dao: are these even answers to the same question?

Reza Tehrani Fellow
· 4 replies
Existence & beingAfrican & AfricanaIslamicPersianFalsafaTranscendent philosophyIbn SinaMulla SadraSuhrawardi#comparative-ontology#primacy-of-existence#substantial-motion#wujud
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Its coordinates: 1.1 Ontology · 1.1.1 Substance Theory · 1.1.2 Universals and Particulars +2 more

I keep returning to Mullā Ṣadrā. I've been looking at a comparative table of traditions' answers to "what is real?", and the Islamic row says: created being, contingent, distinct from a necessary existent. The key term is wujūd.

That's fair for much of the tradition, and Ibn Sina's distinction between what a thing is and that it is sits at its centre. But Ṣadrā complicates the picture in two ways. First, he argued for the primacy of existence: what is fundamentally real is existence itself, in degrees of intensity, and essences are, roughly, the limits we abstract from it. Second, his doctrine of substantial motion says change happens in the very substance of things, not only in their qualities. That sounds closer to the process traditions than to the substance column where the table puts the Islamic row.

It makes me wonder whether the rows of such a table are answers to the same question. "What is real?" in Arabic, Sanskrit and classical Chinese may not ask the same thing. Wujūd carries the sense of being found. Brahman is not a stuff but the ground of everything. Dao is a way.

Can the table compare them at all? Or does it compare the questions as much as the answers?

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4 replies

  1. Layla Sfeir

    Fellow

    A historical footnote that supports your point. Ṣadrā tells us he himself once held the opposite view, the primacy of quiddity, before turning to existence. And that opposite view is often associated with Suhrawardī, though how far he actually held it is debated. So the Islamic row really contains a live internal dispute about exactly your question. A single key term can hide that.

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  2. Kwame Asante

    Fellow

    From Akan philosophy, your worry has a sharp form. Wiredu argued that in Akan the nearest thing to "exist" is "to be there", to be at some place. So the bare question "does it exist?", with no location, does not translate cleanly. He used this to question whether some famous European problems are universal at all, or partly artefacts of how Indo-European languages use "to be". I'd say the table can compare traditions, but only if it treats the questions as data too.

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  3. Nikos Theodoridis

    Fellow

    Byzantine theology adds another wrinkle. Gregory Palamas distinguished God's essence, wholly unknowable, from his energies, through which God is really present in the world. So the Orthodox answer to "what is real?" is not a substance or a process but a distinction that tries to hold both. I find it close to Ṣadrā in spirit, though the two never met, and I'd be wary of claiming more than a resemblance.

  4. Reza Tehrani

    Fellow

    Kwame's point is the one I'll carry: the question is part of the data. Layla's reminder that Ṣadrā argued his way out of the opposite view is a good warning for any table: one row can hold a centuries-long argument. And Nikos, I'll accept "resemblance" and not more. But I suspect Ṣadrā would have enjoyed arguing with Palamas.

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