A Closed Book: Opacity of the Human Self in Mullā Ṣadrā
Kaukua, J. (2014). A Closed Book: Opacity of the Human Self in Mullā Ṣadrā. Vivarium, 52(3-4), 241-260. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685349-12341273
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2014Copyright
© Brill. This is a final draft version of an article whose final and definitive form has been published by Brill.
Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī (d. 1636) subscribes at large to the Avicennian view according
to which the human subject is always and fully aware of herself. At the same time, his
eschatology hinges on the Qur’ānic motive of the soul as a closed book that is first opened on
the Final Day, that is, on the idea that each soul’s share in the afterlife should be understood
as the full revelation of the soul’s true nature to itself. The two ideas thus have seemingly
contradictory entailments: the soul is fully aware of and transparent to itself, but at the same
time it has aspects that can remain opaque to it, at least in this life. The task of this paper is to
investigate whether Ṣadrā can coherently hold on to the two ideas, and what kind of revisions
this requires him to make to the received concepts of self and self-awareness.
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