Possibility of Movement from one Category to Another

جستارهایی در فلسفه و کلام

Volume 57, Issue 1 - Serial Number 114, May 2025, Pages 27-44   

Document Type: Original Article

DOI: 10.22067/epk.2024.90548.1381

Author

Abdolali Shokr^*

Associate Professor, Department of Islamic Philosophy and Theology, Faculty of Theology, Shiraz University

Abstract

The main issue of the article is whether motion can be transferred from one category (supreme genus) to another. Based on the ontological primacy of quiddity, such a thing is not possible and the transformation of one quiddity and essence into another is not possible; that is because there is no single shared matter between them so that one can be transformed into another. Impossible transformation, according to philosophers, is that the quiddity of an object, insofar as it is the quiddity of that object, is transformed into the quiddity of another object in terms of meaning and concept. However, based on primacy of existence, intensifying and perfecting movement occurs in the gradational levels of existence, and it can be said that not only essential transformation is not impossible, but also it occurs in reality– motion can be transferred from one category to other categories. This is contrary to the ancient philosophers who considered categories to be thoroughly different and distinct from each other in such a way that they considered the transition from one category to another impossible. Since, by accepting the primacy of existence, the quiddity is united with and subordinate to existence in the outer world, with the intensification of the levels of existence and the abstraction of the quiddity from each level, the quiddity can also be transformed secondarily and accidentally. Likewise, based on the theory stating that "the human soul is bodily in its origin but spiritual in its survival", it becomes clear that the human soul is transferred through substantial movement from the physical stage as a substantial category to the level of intellectual incorporeality as another substantial category. In the theory of the embodiment of actions, human behavior, which is among the accidental categories, is transformed into psychic dispositions as a result of repetition, which are categorized in substantial categories. Using a descriptive-analytical method, this article has examined this issue.

Keywords

movement in categories; essential transformation; primacy of existence; perfecting of the soul; embodiment of actions; Mullā Sadrā

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