The Emergence of the Ṣadrian Paradigm: A Historical Account of the Reception of Mullā Ṣadrā’s School of Thought in Later Islamic Philosophy

Abstract

Despite forming a long-standing, distinct tradition, later Islamic philosophy has received relatively little serious attention within the existing scholarly historical literature. To partially fill the gap, this article provides the framework for a critical historiography of this enterprise in the post-Mullā Ṣadrā era, focusing primarily on identifying different attitudes taken to the philosophical system of this pivotal figure. In order to attain a novel picture of how Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy became established, historical evidence for the status of this philosophy is discussed with regard to each of the successive periods following Mullā Ṣadrā’s death. The main thesis is that Ṣadrian thought can be considered as functioning like a paradigm of recent Islamic philosophy, though this has become the case only after three preceding periods, each of which lasted roughly one century: first, practitioners of Islamic philosophy either ignored Ṣadrian philosophy in toto or at most rejected its doctrines as a plethora of misconceptions; second, philosophers gradually found it appealing for consideration and study; and third, it prevailed among them as an admirable philosophical system.