The Role of Imagination in Formal Unveilings from Suhrawardī’s and Mulla Ṣadrā’s Point of View

Abstract

  The application of imagination in ontological and epistemological debates of mysticism is always the center of researchers’ attention in philosophical and intuitive knowledge. Among them, imagination has a great role in realization and explanation of many unveilings of mystic. In explaining this issue, Suhrawardī and Mulla Ṣadrā have divided the imagination into conjoined and separated. Conjoined imagination is one of the human’s intrinsic force and the sustainer of imaginative forms and separated imagination is an independent world which is between the world of intellect and the world of sense. In Mulla Ṣadrā’s view, the mystic’s soul by an inner conduct can be united with the separated imagination through conjoined imagination and unveil the ideal forms which have been descended to the conjoined imagination. The outcome of this unveiling is the unity of the soul with its object of witnessing and having an immediate knowledge of it. Suhrawardī considers imagination as a material force and doesn’t embrace the cognation of this with the Idea. But since he believes soul is the main perceiver of Ideal forms, therefore his explanation of the realization of formal unveiling is logical.