Mulla Sadra espouses a doctrine which not only prioritizes existence over essence, but also establishes existence to be reality as such. The world and all its contingents are in fact one singular existence, and essence is a mere illusory mental construct. This has multiple implications, one of which being that no existent thing remains the same between any two moments of time. As a philosopher who is quite difficult to understand, I will attempt to summarize some of his most important arguments below in the hope that it will help me understand his theory more intimately.
Unification: Avicenna argues that it is impossible for a thing to unite with another thing while remaining the same essentially. One thing must be destroyed in the process, and when two things conjoin, an entirely new thing is necessarily created. Mulla Sadra agrees with this to a certain extent, but argues that there are cases where two thing unite, while retaining what he regards as their essences. He considers the case of a human who acquires new intelligible meanings: multiple meanings can be present in a single individual without that individual losing its “essence”. For instance, sensing and speaking are two different things, and they both remain different when conjoined in a single individual being.
Real Predicate: for Mulla Sadra, existence self-evident. Things exist directly before us and we cannot deny this. However, it is almost impossible to prove through demonstration that existence is real. He does provide one such proof, however. He argues that existence is not just a concept of the mind; rather, it must be a real predicate that has a corresponding external reality. If it were not real, the term “existence” would be completely redundant: “Smith exists” would then actually mean “Smith is Smith”, but surely this is not how we use the term. After all, “x exists is true” if and only if x is real (Lecture notes).
Modulated existence: If essence were fundamental, then multiplicity would be real since every individuated being has a unique essence. However, Mulla Sadra argues that existence is fundamental, and essences are not real. Further, existence is univocal because it is applied equally to all beings, both mental being and extra-mental being. If essences are not real, and if existence is univocal, then there is no multiplicity since all individual beings are identical to existence itself. To explain multiplicity, Mulla Sadra argues that existence is singular but gradational. For example, a cause is more prior than its effect, and so participates on a higher level of existence. He also uses the unification argument to argue that a particular cause or effect can unify various meanings together in order to intensify its existence.
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