1 The Neoplatonic Background and Avicenna

For Plotinus, the providential order on the one hand is an expression of the desire and attainment of the good and on the other a necessary manifestation of the sensible world’s ontological dependence upon the intelligible (Enneads III.2.5.6–7, III.2.1.21–26).¹⁹ Since providence is an expression of an intelligible order and design of the cosmos, therefore it should be possible to understand it rationally. This much is clear from the earlier work of Plato (and of Aristotle). Providence as a means for understanding rational order in the cosmos that arises timelessly from a purely good principle thus needs to account for the existence of both natural and moral evils. On the former, Plotinus posits that natural evils are an expression of the world of generation and corruption and arise from the multiplicity and perishability of creation (as well as the basic fact of our embodiment):

Poverty and illness are nothing to good men; to evildoers they are an advantage, and those who have a body must encounter illness. And not even these things are completely useless in the structural ordering and completion of the universe. For just as when some things have been destroyed, the expressed principle of the universe has made use of what has been destroyed for the birth of other things – for nothing ever escapes being taken hold of by it – so, too, when a body has been wasted and a soul weakened by such experiences, what has been taken hold of by disease and vice is subsumed under another chain of events and another order; and some things, such as poverty and illness, make a positive contribution to the very people who suffer, whereas vice supplies something useful for the whole by becoming an example of retribution and by directly providing much that is of use. For it keeps men awake and awakens the intellect and comprehension of those who are opposed to the ways of wickedness and also makes them learn what a good thing virtue is by comparison with the evils which the wicked endure. And, as we have just stated, evils did not come about for these reasons; rather, when they do occur, the cosmic expressed principle makes use of them for some needful purpose; and that this is the sign of the greatest power, to be able to make good use even of evils and be capable of utilizing what has become formless to fashion into other forms. In general, then, evil must be considered to be a lack of goodness, but the lack of goodness must be here because the good is in another. Enneads III.2.5.7–25.²⁰

On the latter, vices or moral evils are the privation of virtues in the soul, and the move towards matter entails a move away from form:

What, then, if someone says that vice or evil in the soul are not absolute privation of Good, but partial privation of Good? But if this is so, since one part has it and one is deprived of it, it will have a mixed disposition and will not have evil unmixed and we will not yet have found primary and unmixed evil. And that which is good in the soul will be in its substantiality and evil will be something accidental in it. Enneads I.8.12.1–7.²¹

Evil arises from matter and is discussed in passages of Enneads I–III which do not seem to have been extant in Arabic – in particular II.4.12 on intelligible and sensible matter, II.5 on matter and potentiality, III.6 on the impassibility of matter, and I.8 on evil. Already in Plato (Timaeus 30 a2–6 and 48 a), matter resists order.²² Enneads I.8 is the first treatise on the nature of evils in which Plotinus postulates the thesis of evil as a form of privation (eidos tou mē antos) and as privation (mē on) although not in an absolute sense because it has some subsistence recalling Plato’s Sophist 257b3–4 and 258d6 (Enneads I.8.3.4–7).²³ Matter as pure receptivity and becoming is by definition not in the realm of being (and hence non-being), drawing upon the account in Timæus 49a–52d.²⁴ Similarly drawing on Plato, he associates evil with the alterity and contrariety in the forms, or in intelligible matter as a (relative) deficiency of being:

Indeed, if all that exists were these [intelligible] Beings and what transcends them, evil would not exist among Beings, or in what transcends them. For these Beings are good. So, it remains that if indeed evil does exist, it exists among non-beings as a sort of form of non-being and is involved in some way with that which is mixed or associated with non-being. ‘Non-being’ does not mean ‘that which is absolutely non-existent’ but only something different from being. Nor does it refer to the nonbeing that Motion and Rest have in relation to Being but rather to an image of Being or to something that has even more non-being than that. This non-being belongs to every sensible object and every state sensible objects are in, whether as something posterior to or accidental to them or as a principle of these or as some one of the elements that together comprise being of this sort. Enneads I.8.3.1–12.²⁵

What follows is a clear association of evil with matter – it is when the soul has fallen and turned its gaze away from the higher intelligibilia to the base matter that it becomes involved in evil (Enneads I.8.5.5–9).²⁶ But matter is still necessary for generation (even if it contains within itself the potentiality for corruption – Enneads II.4.11–12).²⁷ Further, there is also a providential sense in which evil must enter into the chain of emanation – as each hypostasis and level of emanation becomes deficient and moves away from the superabundant One and towards matter, it involves evils:

Lack, then, amounts to not being good, but evil is absolute lack. The greater lack consists in being able to fall into evil and thereby being evil already. Accordingly, it is necessary to think of evil not as a particular evil, such as injustice or some other kind of vice, but as that which yet is none of these, since these are in a way species of evil specified by their own additional [differentiae]. For example, wickedness in the soul and its species are differentiated either by the matter with which they are concerned or by the parts of the soul or by one being a sort of seeing and one an impulse or state. But if someone were to suppose that things outside the soul, like sickness or poverty, can be evils, how will he connect it to the nature of matter? In fact, sickness is a lack or excess in the materialized bodies that do not maintain order or measure. Enneads I.8.7.16–23.²⁸

Matter is privation because it is undetermined by the sensibilia attached to it and because it is an absence of form (Enneads II.5.4.3–18).²⁹ Thus in Plotinus, we can see clear themes that will arise in Avicenna and Mullā Ṣadrā – even if they are articulated in passages that were not appropriated and translated into the Theologia Aristotelis: evil as such is privative and cannot be a coeval principle with the good, evil arises from matter, and is a feature of the oppositions, diversity and contrariety of the world of generation and corruption. As such, Plotinian theodicy is predicated on the traditional Platonic distinction between the real, intelligible world of being, and the imitative, sensible world of becoming, a critical distinction inherited by Islamic thinkers. In the doxographical literature – such as al-Milal waʾl-niḥal of Shahrastānī (d. 548/1153) – one finds (ascribed to al-Šayḫ al-Yūnānī, who corresponds to Plotinus and some similar material) the notion of providence as the wise purpose and intelligent design of the cosmos by the One who is pure good, the distinction between the higher intelligible realm and the lower sensible realm, and the fact of our embodiment entailing privation and imperfection that is overcome through the erotic motion that produces the cosmos and by which the cosmos returns to the One through sympathy.³⁰ Theodicy is thus not explicitly mentioned but its metaphysical principles are indicated.

Proclus is the locus classicus for discussions of evil in the late antique period.³¹ Evil was the opposite of the good – God was the good, the giver of form and order to the cosmos; hence by definition evil implied problems with order and form.³² This is the key expression of the Platonic doctrine of evil inherited in the Islamic world, even if we do not have actual Arabic translations of these works.³³ The main reason for discussing the Proclean texts is to note the echoes that one finds in the work of Mullā Ṣadrā later even if there is an absence of direct historical evidence of the transmission of text. Already in the Elements of Theology, Proclus discussed providence as a feature of the divine intelligibility of the cosmic order that permeates the hierarchy of being from the purest, simple One down to the corporeal bodies.³⁴ Providence works at two levels: it gives a rational description of the way in which the One operates and the chain of being emanates from the One in a series of intellects and spheres, but it also accounts for the intelligible link that the higher divine beings have with lower sensible beings over perpetuity (prop. 141).³⁵ Unfortunately, these propositions are not attested in the Arabic versions, although the early ones that concern the hierarchy of being, and the descent from the One through the chain of emanation through to the materialia and sensibilia are available.³⁶

The basic problem is how to reconcile the existence of evil with providence. As Proclus puts it in On the Existence of Evils:

If there is evil, how will it not stand in the way of that which is providential towards the good? On the other hand, if providence fills the universe, how can there be evil in beings? Some thinkers indeed yield to one of the two lines of reasoning: either they admit that not everything comes from providence and acknowledge there is evil, or they deny the existence of evil, and maintain that everything comes from providence and the good. And this indeed is a troubling problem. But perhaps one may find a perspective from which both points of view do not conflict (DMS, 58.2–7).³⁷

This was the last text in which he dealt with the question. Other examinations came in Ten Problems Concerning Providence in which the fifth problem pertains to the problem of evil. Evil of corruptible bodies constitutes parasitical existence and hence for the good of the cosmos. There is no such thing as ‘pure evil’, while ‘evil’ exists for the good; it is ‘not evil in all respects nor is it unmixed with the good, for it is evil for a certain thing, namely for that which is corrupted, and good for another thing, namely for that which comes to be because of the corruption of the former.’³⁸ He also raises the problem in his Commentary on the Republic on the question of how can there be evil if the gods are only good, cannot change themselves, and do not deceive (in Rep. 1, 37.22–3), and he further links the existence of evils in the world of generation and corruption to the strife and conflict that arises from contrariety (in Rep. 1, 38.9–15).³⁹ In the Commentary on the Timaeus where the same problem of squaring providence with the existence of evil is broached (in Tim. 1, 379.26–381.21):

If someone should ask us whether God wanted evil to exist or did not want it to, we shall reply: ‘both’. To the extent that he bestows existence upon all things, he wanted it to exist; for everything that exists in any sense at all in the universe has proceeded from the demiurgic cause. On the other hand, to the extent that he makes all things good, he did not want it to exist; indeed, he has concealed even evil under a coating of goodness. If you wish to approach [the matter] from a physical perspective, to the extent that evil is evil, it comes per se from the particular soul, accidentally from God – provided, that is, one also accepts that he gave existence to the soul! But to the extent that it is good – for it possesses goodness because it is produced in accordance with justice – it comes per se from the divine cause, accidentally from the soul …

Evil exists neither in the Intellectives, because the entire class of Intellectives is untouched by evil, nor in universal souls or universal bodies, because all wholes are untouched by evil, since they are everlasting and always in accord with nature. It therefore remains that it exists in particular souls or particular bodies …

[A]ll evil exists only as a by-product. But, despite this, even it, because it is coloured with good, has substantial existence. And so, by the will of God, all things are good, and, to the full extent of his power, nothing is devoid of good, even though evil in some senses exists. In fact, given the occurrence of generation, it is impossible [for evil] too not to have arisen as a by-product, since it was necessary for the perfection of the wholes.⁴⁰

Similarly in his Commentary on the Parmenides, he furthers his position on the ultimate unreality of evils by rejecting the notion of the Forms of evils (in Parm. 829.23–831.24).⁴¹ Proclus rejects both Gnostic approaches to the demiurge that question the goodness of providence as well as dualist metaphysics which posit evil as an independent principle (and in that he follows Plotinus).⁴² Unlike Plotinus, he does not think matter is the principle of evil, and unlike the Platonic tradition before him, he allows for the existence of evil albeit as a parasitical existence that depends on good things to exist and for the pursuit of the good; clearly the wider context is a providential concern for the good.⁴³ In On the Existence of Evils, Proclus criticises the Plotinian view that matter is evil as well as the more established Platonic notion that evil is privation (non-existence) (DMS, 30–38).⁴⁴ He thus rejects the popular Plotinian solution to the problem of evil that reduces it to matter which in itself is no thing.⁴⁵ Much of the reason for Proclus’ rejection of absolute evil and accommodation of ‘accidental’ evils relates to his monism.⁴⁶ Evil is thus a deficiency in the true nature of something – or as Mullā Ṣadrā would put it a shortcoming in the perfection of a thing.⁴⁷ Proclus summarises his position:

Existence belongs to those beings that proceed from causes towards a goal, but parasitic existence to beings that neither appear through causes in accordance with nature nor result in a definite end. Evils, then, do not have a principal cause for their generation, a so-called efficient cause – for neither is nature the cause of what happened contrary to nature, nor is reason the cause of what happens contrary to reason – nor do evils attain the final goal, for the sake of which everything that comes about exists. Therefore it is appropriate to call such generation a parasitic existence in that it is without end and unintended, uncaused in a way and indefinite …

Everything that is produced, is produced for the sake of the good; but evil, coming from outside and being adventitious consists in the non-attainment of that which is the appropriate goal of each thing. The non-attainment is due to the weakness of the agent, since the agent has received a nature of such a kind that a part of it is better, a part worse. (DMS 50.23–37).⁴⁸

Therefore the existence of evils pertains to particular bodies and souls in the world of generation and corruption and arises from their strife and loss of symmetry (or alienation for sympathy).⁴⁹ God’s providential care – to which Proclus subscribes – means that even moral evils can be considered to be good; theft is bad if one is the victim but good for the thief – but at the same time it could be good for the victim to transcend one’s evil attachments (DMS 59.4–24).⁵⁰

Three main points need to be extracted from Proclus for our ends. First, evils are parasitic and few in number, and are a natural concomitance of the good in the world of generation and corruption. Second, they are few in number and preponderantly fewer than the good. Third, the accidental evils of the world of generation and corruption are so in a perspectival manner as they are still geared towards the good – deficiency seeks its completion and imperfection desires perfection.

The theodicy of the Sunni Ašʿarī theologian Abū Ḥāmid al-Ġazālī (d. 505/1111) was a popular mode of dealing with squaring divine providence and justice and the existence of evil in the middle period of Islamic intellectual history and a populariser of the notion of this cosmos as ‘the best of all possible worlds’. If, as the Muʿtazila held (at least since the time of Ibrāhīm al-Naẓẓām who died c. 230/845), God only does good and wishes the best (al-aṣlaḥ) for humans, the optimum for their worldly and religious matters, whence does evil come? Similarly, one can only discern the optimum and God’s performance of justice if one has a rational standard for judging good and evil. Ašʿarīs reacted with two positions: first, they affirmed God’s omnipotence including the power over evil, creating and producing it, as well as inflicting it as suffering – humans did not have free will since only God could be an agent.⁵¹ Second, Ašʿarīs also denied that goodness and evil of acts could be rationally discerned independent of the revealed law, with the judge Abū Bakr Ibn al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1013) asserting:

We emphatically deny that there is in the intellect, acting on its own, any way to know the evil of an act or its goodness, its legal prohibition or legal neutrality, or its obligatory nature. These judgements, in their totality, may not be posited for acts except through the divine law, and not through any determination of the intellect.⁵²

A version of compatibilist fatalism thus accounted for theodicy. Ormsby quotes the famous sceptic Abūʾl-Aʿlā al-Maʿarrī (d. 449/1057), apud Yāqūt, as summing up the problem in this way:

Someone may ask whether God wills nothing but the good. Regarding evil, one of two things may be: either God knows it, or He does not. If he knows it, one of two things may be: either he wills it or he does not.

If he does will it, it is as though he were the agent, just as it is said: ‘The prince cut off the thief’s hand’, even though he did not perform the act himself. If God does not will evil, then what is not permitted against an earthly prince, is permitted against him; for whenever something is done in his realm that displeases him, the prince repudiates it and commands its cessation.

This is a difficulty which the theologians have exerted their powers of reasoning to solve, but to no avail.⁵³

Ġazālī’s phrase – there is not in possibility anything more wonderful than what is (laysa fīʾl-imkān abdaʿ mimmā kān) – first appears in a significant chapter in the Revival of the Religious Sciences (Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn) on the subject of faith in divine unity (tawḥīd) and trust in divine providence (tawakkul), which in itself is critical because he considers providence to be intricately linked to divine unity. The cosmos, as it is, is in its essence the best (aḥsan), the most perfect (atamm, akmal) and superior to any hypothetical possible world because of God’s generosity and wisdom.⁵⁴ Wisdom, perfection and similar features only are in the presence of their contrary.⁵⁵ Evil only appears to be as such; in fact, evils are goods in disguise and the latter cannot exist without the former. The perfection of the cosmos must include imperfection. Ġazālī says:

God created nothing without there being wisdom in it and he created nothing without there being blessing in it, either for all people or for some of them. Thus, in God’s creation of suffering (al-balāʾ) there is blessing too, either for the sufferer or for someone else.⁵⁶

The perfect providential care for the cosmos, both the good and the seeming not so good, is similarly expressed in Kitāb al-arbaʿīn:

God wills existing things and sets things created in time in order, for there occur in this world and in the transcendent world neither few nor many, small or great, good or evil, benefit or harm, belief or unbelief, recognition nor denial, fain or loss, increase nor diminishment, obedience nor disobedience, except as a result of God’s decree and predestination and wisdom and will. What He wishes is; what He does not wish, is not.

Not even the casual glance of a spectator nor the stray thought in the mind come to be outside the sphere of His will. He is the originator; He causes recurrence. He is the effecter of what He wills.⁵⁷

This is a highly deterministic, though optimistic, theodicy in which the denial of secondary human causality does not preclude human responsibility because God’s wisdom, generosity and grace means that she does not harm people. Nevertheless, it draws upon the metaphysical determinism of the philosopher Avicenna (d. 1037), his view of providence as well as his position on human responsibility. Others were not so optimistic; Ašʿarī thinkers such as Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210) held that squaring God’s omnipotence with the presence of evil did not need to be rationalised and instead opted for a sort of anti-theodicy (and indeed some of their critique not least of the idea that good dominates evil in the cosmos may have been behind some of the objections examined by Mullā Ṣadrā that we shall have recourse to discussing below).⁵⁸

Avicenna’s theodicy is predicated on the Neoplatonic notion that providence concerns the intelligible design and order of the cosmos, God’s creation and production of the good, and her satisfaction with the best of all possible worlds.⁵⁹ Providence therefore does not concern God’s care for the cosmos or indeed ‘concern’ for lesser beings such as us. Following the Plotinian tradition, metaphysical (or essential) evil is a privation that is entailed by the lower status of matter as passivity and the source of discord.⁶⁰ Moral evil, on the other hand, are accidental and existent, partly arising out of the fact of our embodiment:

This existing apprehended thing is not evil in itself but in connection with this thing. As for the thing’s lack of perfection and wholeness, this is not an evil simply in relation to [the thing] such that [this imperfection] would have an existence that is not an evil for [that thing]. Rather, its very existence is nothing but an evil in it, and in the [very] manner of its being an evil. For blindness can be only in the eye; and, inasmuch as it is in the eye it can only be an evil, having no other aspect in terms of which it would be an evil. As for heat, if, for example, it becomes an evil relative to the sufferer from it, it has another aspect in terms of which it is not an evil. Thus, evil in essence is privation, though not any type of privation but only privation of that to which the nature of the thing necessarily leads in terms of the perfections that belong permanently to its species and nature. Accidental evil [on the other hand] is the non-existent, or that which keeps perfection away from that which deserves it.⁶¹

Thus, (relative, broadly moral) evil is an accidental existence, as we have seen in this preceding discussion from the Metaphysics of the Healing (al-Ilāhīyāt min al-Šifāʾ), book IX, chapter 6 on ‘providence, showing the manner of the entry of evil in divine predetermination’. But he also mentions one important point that was raised in the Neoplatonic tradition, and as we shall see, was addressed by Mullā Ṣadrā, namely that there is on balance more good than evil in the cosmos because humans have free will as rational agents to choose to act and because often evils are relative entities that a good soul may choose with good intentions to good ends.⁶² This best of all possible worlds could not be otherwise even if we may conceive of a perfection existence that is devoid of evil. Avicenna states:

This is not permissible in the likes of this pattern of existence, even though it is permissible in absolute existence as being one mode that is free from evil, which, however, is not this mode. This mode is among the things that have emanated from the First Governor and hence have [come] to exist in intellectual, psychological, and celestial things. This other mode, would, then remain in the realm of the possible. Refraining from bringing it into existence would not have been the same as in the case of that which exists because of what may be mixed with it by way of evil [that is such] that, if its principle did not exist to begin with, and [if the existence] of this evil is left out, this would result in a greater evil than it, so that its existence is the better of two evils. Moreover, [if this mode were not confined to the realm of possibility], it would then follow necessarily that the good causes prior to the causes leading accidentally to evil would not exist. For the existence of [the former causes] renders the others consequential on them. In this there would be the greatest fault in the universal order of the good.⁶³

Avicenna therefore establishes a typology. Metaphysical evils are privative and, following Plotinus, derive from being a receptacle of matter and possibility, as well as dynamic realities that are necessary for the production and completion of the cosmos as it is. Moral evils are more relative and accidental, even contextual, some of which arise out of the desire of an evil soul afflicted by ignorance and inordinate concern for the pleasures of the flesh, and others out of the desire of a godly soul that intends the best.

Avicenna further addresses providence and the problem of evil at the end of namaṭ VII of his Pointers and Reminders (al-Išārāt waʾl-tanbīhāt). Providence for him is God’s knowledge of the whole cosmos (partly resolving the problem of God’s knowledge of particulars) and its order and that knowledge is the producer of the good in the cosmos.⁶⁴

Remark

Things that are contingent in existence (al-umūr al-mumkina fīʾl-wuǧūd) include [1] things whose existence can be altogether free from evil, deficiency, and corruption; [2] things that cannot give their advantages except if they are such that a certain evil proceeds from them at the jamming of motions and the clashing of movable things. Further, in the division there are also [3] things that are evil either absolutely or for the most part (immā ʿalāʾl-iṭlāq wa-immā bi-ḥasab al-ġalaba).

If pure benefit is the principle of the emanation of good existence and be befitting existence, then the existence of the first division must necessarily emanate, such as the existence of the intellectual substances and the like. Also, the second division must necessarily emanate. This is because in the privation of abundant good (ḫayr kaṯīr) and in the nonproduction of it, as a precaution against slight evil, there is great evil, illustrated by the creation of fire; for fire would not give its advantages and would not complete its assistance in perfecting existence unless it is such that it harms and hurts whatever animal bodies happen to collide with it. The same is true of animal bodies. They cannot have their advantages unless they are such that it is possible [A] for their states in their motions and rests, as is the case with the states of fire also, to lead to the coming together of clashes that harm; [B] for their states and the states of things in the world to lead to the occurrence of error from them in the knotting of harm for the afterlife and for the truth; or [C] for an excess of an acting predominant agitation, such as desire or anger that harms the possibility of the afterlife. The above-mentioned powers [such as fire] do not enjoy their richness unless they are such that accidental error and predominant agitation occur to them on the occasion of clashes. This is so in individuals that are fewer than those who are safe and at times fewer than those of safety. Because this is known in the prior providence, it is as if intended incidentally. Thus, evil enters the divine measuring (al-qadar) incidentally (biʾl-ʿaraḍ), as if it were, for example, pleasing [to God] incidentally.⁶⁵

Note, as we shall see, evil accidentally pertains to the divine measuring or destiny (qadar) and not to the divine decree (qaḍāʾ); the latter concerns the divine realm of eternality while the former measures out what exists in the sub-lunary, temporal world of generation and corruption. The second division of contingents that are mixtures of good and evil must exist for the good to be done.⁶⁶ This is because of the erotic motion of the cosmos (as articulated in Avicenna’s Risālat al-ʿišq), a point that Mullā Ṣadrā picks up when he argues that God decrees that all existents – whether intelligible, psychic, sensible or natural – have ingrained within them a desire for perfection and movement towards completing the perfection appropriate to them; all these contingents lack perfection as such from their inception but all have the potentiality and the disposition to love and desire it and recognise the one who is higher in the hierarchy of being who can help them fulfil it.⁶⁷

Before turning to his work, it is worth noting that Mullā Ṣadrā also picks up from Avicenna’s discussion of evil and providence in two further places. The first is in his gloss on a passage from book VI, chapter 5 of the Metaphysics of al-Šifāʾ on the nature of evil as a digression that Avicenna makes on types of purpose:

Know that the existence of the principles of evil belong to the second part of these divisions. Thus, for example, it is necessary within divine providence (which is munificence) that every possible existent should be given the good existence [proper to it]; and, [since] the existence of composites derives from the elements (it being impossible for the composites not to be formed from the elements); and [since] the elements belonging to the composites cannot be other than earth, water, fire, and air; and [since] it is impossible for fire to exist in the manner that leads to the good end for which it is intended unless it burns and disintegrates [things], it follows necessarily from this that [fire] is such that it would harm good people and corrupt many composites.⁶⁸

At one level this looks like an explanation from the limitations of human understanding of divine providence of the distinction between intended and unintended consequences. Mullā Ṣadrā glosses this passage first by saying that a proper discussion of evil is required to refute the contention of dualism (šubhat al-ṯanawīya) that a good God cannot be the same principle as the cause of evil (this much is consistent with the aims of Plotinus and Proclus before as well). He moves on to say that he will discuss the refutation of dualism further (even though he does not gloss that section of the Metaphysics), and says:

Real evil (al-šarr al-ḥaqīqī) is a privative thing and does not rely upon a principle [for its subsistence]. But parasitic evils (al-šurūr al-iḍāfīya) such as the existence of contraries and obstacles and so forth such as poisons and reprehensible actions such as fornication and theft and their like, and vices such as compounded ignorance and jealousy and hate and their similitude, are all necessary concomitants of the existence of many goods, just as the creation of existence leads to their concomitant quiddities. If one were to forgo the existence of these great goods because they concomitantly lead to evils that are fewer in number, that entails forgoing the great good for the little evil. But this is not worthy of a good God, and so it is necessary for this type of good [which concomitantly leads to evils] to emanation from the First Principle, just as it is necessary for the emanation of pure good which does not evil the existence of evil at all such as the immaterials and the celestial beings.⁶⁹

This is a nutshell seems to be Mullā Ṣadrā’s reception of the Proclean view of evil. The main discussion of Avicenna on evil and providence comes in book IX chapter 6 of the Metaphysics of the Healing. The key passage that Mullā Ṣadrā cites is this:

Know that evil, in the sense of privation, is either [(a)] an evil according to a necessary thing or to a beneficial [thing] close to the necessary; or [(b)] not an evil according to this, but an evil according to something that is possible in a minority [of cases] and [which], if it were to exist, would be by way of an excess of the perfections [that come] after the secondary [perfections] and is not required by the nature of the possible thing in which it exists. This division, however, is other than the one with which we are involved and is the one we have made the second alternatives [above]. [In addition to] this, it is not an evil according to species but with respect to a consideration above and beyond what is a necessary requirement for the species – as, for example, ignorance of philosophy, geometry, or the like. For this is not an evil inasmuch as we are humans but an evil [as it affects] the perfection of bringing about rectitude that would be pervasive? You will further know that in truth becomes an evil only if an individual human or his individual soul decrees it. [However,] the individual decrees it, not because he is a human or a soul, but because the [mistaken] goodness of that [thing] has become established for him, and he yearns for it and has become disposed for that [thing] with that disposition which we will be explaining to you later on. Before this, however, it is not one of the things toward which a thing is impelled in preserving the nature of the species in the [same] manner in which it is impelled toward its secondary perfections that succeed the primary perfections. If it did not exist, it would have been a privation of something that is entailed in the nature [of things].⁷⁰

The main point is that evil is a necessary concomitant of the existence of the good – but in comparison is far less prevalent that the good. This again recalls Proclus’ distinction between essential or metaphysical evils, and phenomenal evils that are ‘parasitic’ and can lead to the good, as well as the contention that the good entails its ‘quasi’-contrary of evil, and the goodness of the created order requires the existence of phenomenal evils.

2 Mullā Ṣadrā on Providence and Evil

Providence pertains both to cosmological and epistemological approaches to understanding the nature of reality.⁷¹ It also provides a structured and ordered way of considering the question of why there is something rather than nothing and how are things in phenomenal reality related to one another hierarchically and how they seek their principle through the motivation of love. First, it might be worth contextualising Mullā Ṣadrā’s theodicy within the structure of his magnum opus The Transcendent Philosophy of the Four Journeys of the Intellect (al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya fīʾl-Asfār al-ʿaqlīya al-arbaʿa). The third ‘journey’ on theology proper is divided into ‘stopping-points’ (mawāqif) of which there are ten: the first provides the proof for the existence of God drawing upon the Avicennian tradition, the second considers the broad issue of the divine names and attributes, stopping-points III–VII consider what are considered the ‘essential’ divine attributes such as omniscience (ʿilm, where the problem of God’s knowledge of particulars is broached as well as his solution based on the identity thesis and presential knowledge), omnipotence (qudra), life (that God is ḥayy), perceiving and ever watchful (that God is samīʿ and baṣīr), and God’s revelation and speech (that God is mutakallim). Stopping-points nine and ten pertain to extensions of providence: the former relates to the nature of the emanation of existence from God and the way in which the chain of being is related through the principle of ‘nobler contingency’ (imkān ašraf), and the latter is on the continuous care and munificence of the divine in the order of being as an expression of her sempiternal power (azalīyat qudratihi).

Stopping-point eight (mawqif VIII) itself on divine providence (ʿināya ilāhīya) divides into twenty-two chapters and three discernable sections: on providence itself as an expression of the divine and the distinction between the higher intelligible and the lower sensible realms, the analysis of evil and theodicy, and finally the discussion of erotic motion and sympathy that permeates the cosmos and accounts for its reversion to God. Throughout this lengthy discussion (Avicenna devotes around ten pages in his major work the Metaphysics of the Healing on this topic, while Mullā Ṣadrā’s analysis in the more recent critical edition of al-Asfār covers around 170 pages), he engages with the philosophical traditions of Avicennism and extensively glosses relevant Qurʾanic verses.

At the beginning of Mawqif VIII on providence, Mullā Ṣadrā provides this crucial definition:

There is no doubt that the Necessary Existence is the perfection of reality and above perfection, as is the case with some of the cherubim, the holy intellects perfect in their essences with their very ipseities conjoined with the True One. They do not do what they do out of purpose for what is below them in this cosmos. In sum, it is not proper for the higher causes to emanate actions including purposes that would return those actions to them based on motivations prior to the act. If they were not perfect in word and essence but rather deficient relying for their perfection in a sense upon their effects, then this would be highly impossible. It is established that they do not have a care for their actions nor any motivation that propels them nor any need that intervenes in their essences or a will additional to them; they are only led by the highest good and the loftiest most perfect light.

As for the True One, there is no purpose above him to which he looks for the effusion of the good and the radiance of the comprehensive mercy. In fact, we witness in the existents of this cosmos and the parts of the order and the individuals of things – especially the flora and fauna, even in the universal archetypes among the spheres and the celestial principles – the beauty of governance and the generosity of hierarchy and the care for the optimal and the beneficial and the creation of powers and causes inclined to ends, repelling afflictions and corruptions. One cannot bear to deny the wondrous effects in the particulars of things, so how can one deny them of their universals?

Providence is the being of the One knowing through his essence what is in existence in the greatest good and the perfect order and being a cause through his essence of the good and of perfection to the greatest extent possible, and being pleasing. These three meanings – knowledge, causation and being pleasing – together constitute what providence means, all of them being his very essence, in the sense that his essence is knowledge of the order of the good and the same as the perfect cause for that order and the same as the pleasure from it – this is the eternal desire. His essence by his essence is the form of the order of the good in the loftiest and most noble sense because the True Being has no purpose, no limit in perfection beyond him. As it is so, then one can intellect the order of the good in the most complete form in the order and its perfection in contingency, so what one intellects as an order and as a good is emanated from Him.

This is the meaning of providence unadulterated by doubt and imperfection. Whoever believes otherwise such as those who claim that all is by chance as is attributed to some of the ancients or such as those who claim that the divine will is free of wisdom and end as is attributed to al-Ašʿarī or such as those who claim that there is a lowly end reverting to the creation, they have all been led far astray and are ignorant of the transcendence and simplicity of God the exalted: ‘They do not consider God as is his due’ (Q. al-Anʿām 6:91).⁷²

Here one finds the definitions of providence already found in Proclus and Avicenna that stresses why creation cannot be motivated by God’s desire for what is ontologically lesser and how providence captures the intelligent design, the creative causation and the satisfaction with the cosmos on the part of God. The stress in this passage upon divine wisdom (and not a passible desire for what is lower) for creating a providential order in the cosmos as it exists, is further glossed in five short chapters that are replete with scriptural citations in the middle of Mawqif VIII.⁷³ These chapters rehearse elements of cosmological and teleological arguments for the existence of God. Central is the discussion of the creation of the human in the most base of form as pure potentiality and matter but placing within that base thing a potentiality and disposition to seek perfection and become perfect itself, drawing upon his principle of ‘substance in motion’ such that the human can be the best of the cosmos and its most noble aspect.⁷⁴ This is a deliberate play upon a reversal of the Qurʾanic formula in sūrat al-ṭīn (Q. 95.4–5): ‘verily we created the human in the best of form (aḥsan al-taqwīm), then we rendered him into the lowest of the low (asfal al-sāfilīn)’.⁷⁵

In a critical chapter on the principle that the sensible and intelligible worlds are both created in best of forms possible, Mullā Ṣadrā says:

The Necessary Being (wāǧib al-wuǧūd) is the god of this cosmos (ilāh al-ʿālam) dissociated from any manner of deficiency, his existence is his essence, and his reality is the most excellent of the modes of existence and the most perfect one (wuǧūduhu allaḏī huwa ḏātuhu wa-ḥaqīqatuhu afḍal anḥāʾ al-wuǧūd wa-atammuhā).⁷⁶ In fact, his is the reality of existence and its quiddity. All save him is a ray and spark or shadow of him. Thus, we claim: he is the necessary being in every aspect and he is all existence since he in his totality is existence, and because of this he has no cause and there is nothing prior to his existence. He has no agent, nor any matter or form nor substrate nor telos. Rather he is the telos of tele (ġāyat al-ġāyāt) and the origin of all principles (mabdāʾ al-mabādiʾ) and the form of forms and the reality of realities (ḥaqīqat al-ḥaqāʾiq) and the instantiator of essences (muḏawwit al-ḏawāt) and the substantiator of substances (muǧawhar al-ǧawāhir) and that which makes things what they are. Everything that is in the way that is it issues from him and is made by him …

His existence by which his essence is a thing is the same as his existence by which he acts. His essence – in its being an essence and a principle – is a simple thing in reality and considered in the mind unlike other agents …

God knows everything other than Himself in the best manner because the knowledge-forms of things are His very essence. Things, therefore, have divine knowledge-forms before their actual existence, and these forms have a divine sacred existence. Whatever is a divine being is of necessity the most beautiful and magnificent (fī ġāyat al-ḥusn waʾl-bahāʾ). When the similitudes (mithāl) of these forms are actualized in the world of generation [and corruption] (ʿālam al-kawn), they must necessarily be the most magnificent and noble of what can be in the world of generation [and corruption].⁷⁷

The supra-perfection and goodness of God, and his non-teleological provision of existence and goodness constitutes providence that is not selfish.⁷⁸ Divine providence requires each entity to arrive at its own perfection and the path that it may take is through prior shortcomings and ‘evils’.

An explanation that existents that revert and actual beings in the ranks of ascent in this world of composition are the most bountiful and in the most excellent order.

The order of actualized things in this world pertains to the motions of the spheres and their positions and the order of the spheres is a shadow of the order of the world of the divine decree which as you have learned is the most perfect and complete. As it has been repeated and realized, these existents do not emanate by coincidence and by chance … nor by way of an arbitrary will – as the Ašāʿira assume – nor due to an incomplete will or an additional motive … nor due to nature or a consciousness that it has in its essence above its consciousness upon which it was emanated as the filthiest of materialists and atheists hold. Rather, the rational order which the philosophers call providence emanates from this existing order and it is the best and most excellent possible.⁷⁹

Everything in this order is necessary and natural to its disposition and neither arbitrary nor coincidental or by chance. This is why it is somewhat odd that Kalin argues that Mullā Ṣadrā’s position is consistent with the Ašāʿira in determining the good because God ordains it as such.⁸⁰ Goodness in this sense is not the rational good of moral acts whose opposite is qubḥ. Ašʿarī divine command theory pertains that the good as we know is from the revealed texts. That is not the claim of Mullā Ṣadrā here – the rational order is revealed in the sense of a natural theology that can be discerned by the sound human intellect independently.

Because the One is perfection and glory and ecstasy and pure light, everything is geared towards it especially since they are contaminated by evils. For Mullā Ṣadrā, in essence evil as such, following the Neoplatonists, constitutes a privation in the essence of the thing or a privation or absence of perfection in a thing. Therefore, in itself, evil is privative even though we conceive of it as existent. He concludes the basic definition in this syllogistic form: If evil were an ontological thing, then evil would not be evil. Since the subsequent is false, therefore the antecedent is as well.⁸¹ But what of those things that we consider to be evil such as death and ignorance and grief and pain and so forth? These are of two kinds, the first pertains directly to the one affected and harmed in the form of moral evils, and the latter are indirectly affected such as the clouds blocking the sun from benefiting us. Mullā Ṣadrā is more concerned with the former. They are so with respect to what the intellect and the religion dictate (al-ḏamm al-ʿaqlī waʾl-šarʿī) but in and of themselves they are not evil. Mullā Ṣadrā says:

The condemned moral characters that prevent human souls from reaching their intellective perfection, like avarice, cowardice, wastefulness, pride, and vanity, and such wicked acts as injustice, wrongful killing, adultery, theft, calumny, defamation, obscenity, and the like, are not evil in themselves but rather states of goodness emanating from being (al-ḫayrāt al-wuǧūdīya). They are [states of] perfections for natural entities and animal or vegetative powers that we find in man. Their evilness is only in comparison to a higher and nobler power which, in its perfection, has command over the disobedient and noncompliant powers under it.⁸²

Similarly, elsewhere he discusses moral evils along this spectrum of goods and evils that are relative.

All actions can be a perfection and a good for humans – not insofar as they are human or as they relate to the rational part of it – but insofar as they are faculties associated with being an animal such that rational and religious condemnation only applies to them in the sense of being determined and related to the rational substance that has dominion over the passions.⁸³

In fact, some of the passions can be a good thing – we consider anger to be a negative trait and a passion. But insofar as it reflects the wrath of God it can be a good. Similarly, desire can be an evil if it leads one to fornication; but it is a good if it propels the soul towards what is better and acts as an erotic motivation.⁸⁴ He contends at the end of that discussion that there is nothing that is purely in existence or in the good that is condemnable, but it can only be considered so in a relative manner. What this raises is the distinction between two senses of evil: ontological evil or what we normally call šarr, and a rational consideration of moral acts that are called qubḥ.

At this point, Mullā Ṣadrā considers an objection from the marginalia of Ǧalāl al-Dīn Davānī (d. 1502), the Avicennian Ašʿarī theologian, on the much-glossed theological compendium Šarḥ al-taǧrīd:

Pain is a type of perception so it is ontologically a quantity of good in essence, even if it is associated with being privative, hence it is evil accidentally. Here we have one evil that in reality is the absence of a certain perfection but we experience it as occurring as two evils, one of which is a privative matter such as the cutting of a limb or the waning of health and the other is an ontological matter which is the very pain itself. And that specific ontological thing is evil in itself even though it is also associated with being another evil. There is no doubt that differentiating the connection – whether it is perceived or not – is evil arranged after another evil is clear that no intelligent person can deny.⁸⁵

The point Davānī wants to make is that it turns out that an aspect of what exists is intrinsically evil and that seems to violate the rule that ‘evil in itself is privation’. He seems in a sense to be pushing against the Proclean, and thus Mullā Ṣadrā responds to him. Davānī only distinguishes between the evil of the pain and its actual detail because he holds to a representational theory of knowledge. But pain is experienced as immediate knowledge in which the perception of the absence of something is immediate and does not require the mediation of the form or sense datum in the mind. But his position is indeed that evil is accidental and relative and usually attached to matter either at its inception when the thing that undergoes generation and corruption is formed or due to an obstacle or privation that comes later such as cold affecting plants.⁸⁶ His optimism is expressed by the fact that he considers the cosmos to be primarily made up of good with some evil, so the relativity of evil is balanced because the cosmos seeks perfection and the good.⁸⁷

Similarly, in his discussion of the meaning of the bounty of God in his exegesis of sūrat al-Fātiḥa, Mullā Ṣadrā considers a relative and perspectival approach to the question of good and evil. He begins by arguing that one can divide goods into those that are affected by themselves, those that are affected by another and those that are affected by both themselves and others. An example of the first is the pleasure that arises from contemplating God and the felicity of meeting him. An example of the second is money because it is a means to something else. An example of the third is health. The second and the third must contain within the bounty and good a deficiency and an evil. From another perceptive, he says that goods are of three types: beneficial, beautiful and pleasurable. The first of these is ultimately useful, the second of these is good in all states and the third is fleeting. Similarly, evils can be divided into harmful, ugly, and painful. Both good and evil are further divided into the absolute and the limited, with the former covering all three possibilities. An absolute good is knowledge which is beneficial, beautiful and pleasurable. An absolute evil is compounded ignorance because it is harmful, ugly, and painful. However, on the limited side, we can have various compositions. For example, you can have something that is beneficial but painful such as the amputation of a diseased finger, or something which is beneficial but ugly such as stupidity because the stupid person feels contented.⁸⁸ Similar to the latter case, in his exegesis on Sūrat Yāsīn is his contention that something such as a satanic whispering may be a good in the here and now because it might be pleasurable but is an evil in the afterlife because acting in accordance leads to negative effects there.⁸⁹

A good is intrinsic to a thing whilst the evil is something extrinsic and accidental; in other words, good is fiṭrī while evil is kasbī with respect to the innate disposition of the thing, which strikes one as a strange formulation drawing upon Ibn ʿArabī. Mullā Ṣadrā in his exegesis on Sūrat Yāsīn draws this out. It is not necessarily for the commission of a thing to be always just and appropriate in every sense, it might even be far from appropriate and insightful. The stupid person may choose for himself what is evil with respect to itself but harmful for his ignorance and his stupidity and in this sense his commission over it would not be appropriate or wise but rather inappropriate and unwise. What would be just and wise and compassionate would be to prevent him from it. Our use of the term ‘evil’ in a sense is conventional but it is not evil as such which is privative.⁹⁰

Elsewhere he makes a distinction between what is evil in its original essence (biʾl-aṣāla) and what is evil not in its original essence (lā biʾl-aṣāla). An example of the former is what is forbidden by the law and by the intellect and an example of the later is permissible desires.⁹¹ Once again this begs the question of how Mullā Ṣadrā’s position on the discernability of evil is compatible with Ašʿarī theology.

Evil is geared towards a higher good. As Mullā Ṣadrā says, for many things an element of what perfects them could be harmful or corrupting for other things. This is an element of his metaphysics of relations as Kalin puts it.⁹² In this sense, shortcomings and deficiencies and evils are concomitants of good ends. The principle here is a version of the Neoplatonic rule that the cause is greater than the effect. Creation necessitates deficiency in what is created because what is created must be lesser than its creator.⁹³ Since evils are elements of privation and deficiency, they have no agent as such that causes them. Evil cannot therefore enter into the divine decree – and hence evil cannot be caused directly by the divine decree. A further argument is that the intelligible forms of things do not have evil intrinsic to them because they are not considered with respect to individuals; hence intelligible fire in the celestial realm has no evil nor does the intelligible human.⁹⁴ This also follows a basic principle that he draws from Ṭūsī in his Šarḥ al-išārāt that the divine decree pertains to the intelligible world as a whole while the measuring out of destinies pertains to the extra-mental world of generation and corruption in its particularities.⁹⁵ As such evil is relative. Everything inclines towards the good. Evils are purely accidental things in the absence of goodness. Apart from pure good and pure evil – the latter by definition not existing – everything in the hierarchy of being is a mixture of good and evil, the latter being a relative and accidental existent.

Perhaps the most interesting element of his discussion of evil is the consideration of objections to theodicy that he claims are raised by people. In this sixth chapter, Mullā Ṣadrā deals with objections to his position that the cosmos is primarily a mixture of good and evil in which the former predominates (the position that we have seen he inherits from both Proclus and Avicenna).

• 1) The first objection is a simple one. Why would God produce a contingent cosmos in which there is any evil? Mullā Ṣadrā reverts to a definitional argument – if there were a complete absence of evil, then these contingents would not exist because it is in the very nature and definition of the contingent that it must contain elements of imperfection and deficiency (and composition) for which we use the term evil.⁹⁶

• 2) The second relates to a common-sense empirical observation that if we consider one aspect of the creation and its most noble element, the human, we see that most of them seem to have succumbed to evil and perform evil deeds and allow their passions to control them. His response is to consider the original state in which humans are created and point towards three divisions. The first encompasses those whose health and goodness has matured. The second are those in whom health and goodness is average along a scale. The third are those who are diseased, deficient, and mired in ugliness – and the first two categories dominate. But in terms of the afterlife, there are three grades of people with respect to their acquisition of wisdom and knowledge: those perfected, those average, and those confirmed in their ignorance – and the last two categories dominate. The point is that taken overall both in terms of this world and the next, it is the godly and the moderately godly who dominate.⁹⁷ This also demonstrates another aspect of his philosophical theology that takes this cosmos and life along with the afterlife as a continuum of modulated and singular reality of being.

• 3) The third objection is that if the fact that humans disobey God and commit vices and that is within the divine measuring, then surely this violates the notion that God is super-abundantly generous and wishes the good? Humans have no choice ultimately but to be evil at least a bit of the time. This seems akin to the Platonic problem of weakness of will or akrasia. Mullā Ṣadrā responds that God has neither need for our obedience or our disobedience. But recall the Šiʿi theological position of al-Ḥillī that God wishes for us to be obedient. However, this problem arises from the fact of our embodiment, and we carry the punishment of the afterlife with us through the ugly acts that we perform and the base things that we do. He reads the objection as pertaining to the question of responsibility so it is less about the existence of the good but more about how we can be punished if we are destined to be in a particular way. As such the problem reverts to the classic issue of human agency and responsibility for acts that were argued by the Muʿtazila and Ašāʿira. His response is that we are not destined to act in particular ways but have dispositions and material attachments that incline us in a particular way. So, we still choose evil and will see its consequences.⁹⁸ Mullā Ṣadrā’s commitment – along with Avicenna as well as the Šiʿi theological tradition – to human free will remains intact.

• 4) Another objection is that given the scheme of emanation in which the nous issues from the One and then a soul and then the celestial bodies and finally matter which is base, then surely what this means is that evil emanates directly and essentially from the good. Mullā Ṣadrā responds that this is a mistake that confuses necessitation and the true goal of things. Or to put it in other terms: it is incorrect to conflate causality with consecutive occurrence. He maintains that it is foolish to consider that the goal of creation is the physical cosmos and the weak human, consistent with the position articulated above that God’s providence does not create motivated by a desire for what is ontologically inferior. Matter is not the telos of the cosmos – the testing of the humans so that they might revert back to God through seeking perfection is the true goal in theological terms. He gives the example of why it is that the friends of God in particular are those who suffer the most.⁹⁹ The fulfilment of divine providence is entailed by the perfection of the cosmos and humanity’s loving reversion to the One.

• 5) The final objection that he considers is described as the strongest one. If God is generous and gracious, pure good, and does not need either the obedience or disobedience of creatures, then why does he punish those who reject him at judgement? Why is that punishment eternal? Surely rejection of God in itself means that human nature has changed from its initial disposition? This raises the problem of hell. Mullā Ṣadrā postpones the response to his discussion of the afterlife in safar IV only noting that God’s grace is general to all and his mercy all encompassing. It seems that he is indicating two things: that mercy means that punishment is not eternal (following Ibn ʿArabī), and that humans like all existents are in constant renewal and changing selves and one cannot expect them to remain as they were in their inception both in a good and a bad direction.¹⁰⁰

Critical to Mullā Ṣadrā’s notion that this is the best of all possible worlds with its mixture of perfections and imperfections in phenomenal reality is his notion of modulated monism (waḥda mušakkaka) and the simple reality of the divine that is manifest in the role of the microcosmic human as the simple reality that brings all together. The totality of the cosmos as a singular person is the one thing that emanates from the True One; however, one can also consider the totality of the cosmos to be hierarchically arranged and gradually created as well. This goes to the heart of Mullā Ṣadrā’s view of how the cosmos is contingent as a whole and a logical product of God but also in a process of gradually being created:

If you were to claim:

If the cosmos in its totality – I mean the macroanthropos (al-insān al-kabīr) – is one person who is the noblest of all contingent beings because the cause of its instauration and the cause of its perfection is one thing, namely the Truth, then we would claim: this judgement applies to the first effect and in reality it applies to its similitude, therefore it follows that from the True One two things emanate which is impossible. It also entails that the existence of the two are of one species above the level of [the world of] generation [and corruption] and that also opposes the principle of philosophy.

Its refutation is that from that it does not follow that there is multiplicity in reality, as we have previously verified that the perfection of the reality of a thing can only pertain to the level of its distant differentia which is the form in which all of its features are constituted. And you know that the thing in its form is that very thing and not in its matter. What emanates from the Truth is one thing which is the macroanthropos in its very personhood, but it can be considered in two senses – a holistic one and a more detailed one. And the only difference between these two modes of consideration is the mode of perception and not the actual thing perceived. If you consider the totality of the cosmos insofar as it is a simple reality you will judge that it emanates from the true One in a singular emanation and a simple instauration (ǧaʿlan basīṭan). And if you consider its detailed features one by one then you judge that what emanates from Him first is the most noble of its parts and the most perfect of its constituents which is the first intellect; since the intellect is all things – as has been mentioned – then all remaining things one by one are a hierarchy of nobler and nobler and more perfect and more perfect and similarly towards the more base in existence and the more weak in it [existence].¹⁰¹

Both the microcosm and the macrocosm are theophanies and one way to resolve the problem of evil is to consider this aspect of the created order. The modulated singularity of the contingent created order does not obviate metaphysical diversity as we experience it. For Mullā Ṣadrā, it does not matter whether one considers the entirety of the cosmos as identical to the first thing emanated, namely the first intellect or whether one looks at the detailed hierarchy and gradation within the order of the cosmos. Ultimately those ‘rooted in knowledge’ understand that the phenomenal multiplicity and the different stages of space and time do not violate the ultimate unity of what is created. It is the divine governance of the rational order of the cosmos that the lower and the imperfect seeks the higher and the more perfect, and that later plays a critical role in the perfecting of the former. So, for example, form perfects matter, and the intellect perfects the soul. Thus,

[T]he manner of the True One with the intellect and the soul and the nature and all things in their constitution and bringing into existence and guidance and direction and providence and facilitating grace and mercy and munificence and grace is above all that.¹⁰²

It is because God is above the totality of the rational order that the goodness and perfection of that order reflects that of the divine. Thus far, Mullā Ṣadrā’s theodicy seems akin to other forms of Neoplatonic attempts to explain how evil can intervene in divine providence. But what makes his position more interesting is not only the further solution which re-introduces the role of eros into the cosmos but also his monism that arises from a deeper contemplation of divine simplicity to which we now develop.

3 Modulated Monism and the Simple Reality

In al-Maẓāhir al-ilāhīya, Mullā Ṣadrā contemplates the Avicennan notion of providence as an intellecting approach to the creation and knowledge of the entirety of the cosmos, because the ‘simple intellect’ (al-ʿaql al-basīṭ) that is the divine intellect encompasses all things and through its emanation of forms, it creates discrete knowledge that pertains to the essences of things that have issued from that simple intellect in their nature, in a manner that they – those things – are ‘from it’ and not ‘in it’.¹⁰³ This clearly draws upon the presentation of the simple intellect in the Theologia Aristotelis and the notion of the perfection of the intellect (and indeed of it being above perfection – fawq al-tamām).¹⁰⁴ In this context – as he often does – Mullā Ṣadrā quotes a Qurʾanic verse to justify: ‘and with him are the keys to the unseen (mafātīḥ al-ġayb) none knows them but he’ (Q. al-Anʿām 6.59).¹⁰⁵ The mediation is provided by the ‘calamus’ (al-qalam) – equivalent to the Neoplatonic nous – which like the divine is a simple intellect and a pure simple reality (wāḥid ḥaqīqī basīṭ). It is this that fashions the realities of things on the ‘tablets of the souls and on the scrolls of hearts’ (fī alwāḥ al-nufūs wa-ṣaḥāʾif al-qulūb). Although it is a lesser being than the true One, once again with reference to the revelation: ‘there is nothing but that we possess its treasures’ (Q. al-Ḥijr 15.21). Mullā Ṣadrā explains the synonyms of this first emanation: ‘the first intellect, the great soul, and angel brought near and the most noble contingent … the Mother of the Scripture’ – and as we have already seen, the perfect human, the microcosm. He relates this to the dual nature of providence that is explained in terms of the two aspects of who God decrees what exists in the created order through the theological notions of the ‘measuring out’ and the decree.

There are two levels to the functioning of the divine providence and its apportioning of the lot of contingents. The first is the intellectual measuring (al-qadar al-ʿilmī) out of the lot, which determines the forms of existents in specific spaces and times. The second is the extra-mental measuring (al-qadar al-ḫāriǧī) that pertains to the actual places and times of contingents. The higher intelligible realm of the calamus and the first nous is the locus of the divine decree (al-qaḍāʾ) but the lower level of the world of generation and corruption is where the measuring out takes place.¹⁰⁶

In al-Ḥikma al-ʿaršīya, Mullā Ṣadrā puts forward a view that conflates the notion of divine providence with mercy that encompasses all things in his attempt to explain the existence of punishment in the hellfire – and we know that the ontological mandate of mercy is something dear to his version of apocatastasis.¹⁰⁷ Just as the cosmos cannot exist without ‘crude and rough souls, and extremely hard and cruel hearts’, similarly because of the diversity and hierarchy of human souls, there is punishment in the hellfire that abides consistent with divine wisdom and providence.¹⁰⁸ So it turns out that Mullā Ṣadrā collapses his understanding of divine knowledge and will, through the recourse to divine simplicity, into his presentation of providence.

On the problem of the relationship of the divine attributes and the essences are united in their referent and in critique of Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (ṣāḥib al-taškīk), Mullā Ṣadrā defends the Avicennian doctrine of divine simplicity and says:

This scholar did not understand the difference between the concept of a thing and its existence and he imagined that a distinction in the concept is the same as the distinction in existence. He failed to discern that the essential and perfect attributes of God – exalted is he – such as his knowledge and his power and his will and his life and his hearing and his seeing are all a singular essence, a singular ipseity and a single existence, and similarly his necessity and his existence and his unity are all a simple reality, without an difference of consideration either in the mind or in extra-mental reality or in any analytic manner.¹⁰⁹

He reiterates precisely this point about the simplicity of God as an expression of the identity of the divine attributes and the divine essence that manifest perfection in mawqif II chapter 4 of the third journey.¹¹⁰ Much of that chapter is an exegetical gloss on the famous opening sermon of the Nahǧ al-balāġa attributed to the first Šiʿi Imām ʿAlī. This is one aspect of the simple reality – a proof aligned against the Ašʿarī theory of non-identity of the divine attributes with the divine essence. In fact, the following chapter 5 then engages how the identity of the attributes to the essence does not preclude that the different attributes have meaningfully multiple senses. He explains it with recourse to his monistic metaphysics of the ontological primacy of existence, while explaining a slightly different theodicy that identifies discord and strife in the cosmos with the discordant meanings of the divine names as they are manifest in this world:

The realisation – that we have repeatedly stated – is that existence is the foundation of what exists (al-wuǧūd huwa l-aṣl fīʾl-wuǧūdīya) and it is that which differentiates perfection from deficiency, intensity from debility. Wherever one finds existence that is the most perfect and the most puissant (akmal wa-aqwā), it is the referent for many perfect meanings and properties and the basis for multiple effects and activities. Indeed, whatever is most perfect and most noble, with the multiplicity of its attributes and properties it is most intense in its simplicity and singularity, and whatever becomes deficient and weaker, its properties and qualities are fewer, and it is closer to becoming a receptacle for plurality and discord such that it becomes differentiated in many multiple meanings that necessitate the discord of those meanings with respect to that weak existent. So the differentiation of the names that are contrary belonging to Him, such as “the guide” and “the one who misguides”, and “the giver of life” and “the giver of death” and “the one who expands” and “the one who contracts” and “the first” and “the last” and “the forgiver” and “the destroyer”, are the reason for the discord of existents and the obstinacies of entities that are their traces and their manifestations such as guidance and misguidance … and even the contraries of bodies and souls.¹¹¹

The doctrine of the simple reality (basīṭ al-ḥaqīqa) is more than an affirmation of divine simplicity and an expression of the Avicennian doctrine that the divine essence is the existence of the divine (innīyatuhu māhīyatuhu). It rejects all manner of differentiation whether conceptual or real in the godhead, including not just hylomorphic dyadism or existence-essence dyadism, but also any ‘contamination’ of existence with privation. However, the simple reality entails that all perfections are found in the One and that includes the perfection of allowing for imperfections to exist within the cosmos that issues from the divine.

In order to make sense of his notion of simplicity, we need to analyse the ways in which he uses the notions of complexity and simplicity (mainly from his discussion of the nature of substance and its analytical and metaphysically real parts). The primary division of types of complexity is between mental and analytic composition (tarkīb ḏihnī, tarkīb ʿaqlī) – such as that between the genus and the differentia of an essence considered in the mind – and extra-mental (ḫāriǧī) composition such as hylemorphic composition of form and matter (ṣūra wa-mādda).¹¹² A parallel type of complexity relates to mathematical sequences (miqdārī) and order whereby units of measures constitute complexity within a singular scale. He further analyses two forms of complexity in substances: unitive (taʾaḥḥadī, ittiḥādī), such as the union of form and matter in a substance, and composite (taʾlīfī) that pertains to the complexity of a substrate and its accidents (mawḍūʿ, aʿrāḍ).¹¹³ Mullā Ṣadrā analyses extra-mental complexity, pertaining to natural bodies, by stating that these are of two kinds: in the first one thing is incorporated into another and this is further analysed into natural (ṭabīʿī) and artificial (ṣināʿī) such as the limbs of an animal with respect to its body, and the bricks with respect to a building; in the second, one thing becomes another and remains a singular indivisible reality such as a person becoming wise.¹¹⁴ Most of these types of complexity pertain to the analytical parts of a concept or an essence even if these are natural universals which exist.¹¹⁵ A final type of complexity – which constitutes a unity in actuality – is that between existence and essence – an existential dyad (zawǧ tarkībī): the ontological status of a thing is identical and it is not the case that the essence of a thing has a fact of being existent (mawǧūdīya) that is distinct from its existence’s being existent.¹¹⁶

Mullā Ṣadrā’s contention is that the coming together of all things and God is, of course, not a type of complexity but a simplicity. So which one is it? The contention that God is a simple reality which constitutes the entirety of existence does not entail any form of complexity. According to Mullā Ṣadrā, there are three ways in which a thing can be simplex, of which the first two are ruled out for God:¹¹⁷

• 1) An extra-mental (ḫāriǧī) thing that is not hylemorphically composed – for example, one of the nine categorical accidents in the Aristotelian scheme.¹¹⁸

• 2) The intelligible (ʿaqlī) thing that is not composed of the Porphyryan predicables such as a summum genus (ǧins ʿālī). Prime matter in itself as another example.¹¹⁹

• 3) Finally, the simple reality (basīṭ ḥaqīqī) is the purest sense of simplicity – no types of complexity can be admitted such as hylemorphism or existence-essence, or genus-differentia or mathematical, or alchemical, or even of presence and absence. The only example is God.

He then briefly considers three corroborating arguments, the first of which is similar to the response to the objection associated with Ibn Kammūna (d. 683/1284) on why there cannot be two necessary existences. First, if the divine essence were complex, then one of three options might apply: either one part is the necessary existence, or some of them are the necessary or none of them are. But all three options are invalid and each one leads to an absurdity which threaten the doctrine of monotheism as well as divine simplicity.¹²⁰ Second, God is simplex in that her existence is her essence, and in fact she has no essence nor any parts either analytical or in extra-mental reality. Every simplex in the mind is simplex in extra-mental reality.¹²¹ His third point is somewhat more of a rhetorical conclusion:

If the necessary had definitional parts in the mind, then either all of them would be the reality of existence or some of them would be the reality of existence or none of them. In all of these cases it would not be possible to predicate anything of God and so the possibilities cannot be supposed.¹²²

God is existentially simplex in every possible sense. The phenomenal nature of multiplicity that we experience arises from the modulated nature in which the singular reality of existence presents itself to us in Mullā Ṣadrā’s doctrine of taškīk al-wuǧūd. He hints at the distinction between a more monistic reading and a more modulated one of the simple reality by invoking the theological notions of transcendence (tanzīh) and immanence (tašbīh):

Transcendence refers to the station of God’s singularity (aḥadīya) in which all things perish, and he is the One, the destroyer apart from there is no One in existence. Immanence refers to the stations of multiplicity and being-an-effect. All praise refers to His unique countenance, and all glory, sanctification and all panegyrics are hers. This is because his activity is the effusion of being on every existent while all existence is pure good and that is what is instaured and emanated. Evils and privations are not instaured, nor are essences who have never smelled the fragrance of existence.¹²³

This is reiterated in an earlier chapter on the unicity of the First Mover in the first journey:

So it is established that there are two sides in existence. The first of the two is the True One (al-ḥaqq al-awwal) and pure Being, exalted is his name, and the other is prime matter (al-hayūla al-ūlā). The first is pure goodness, and that other is evil, which only possesses goodness in it accidentally since it is a potentiality for all existent things to be good accidentally in opposition to privation. [That] is pure evil, and thus it is clear that the body is a composite of matter and form because the body has in it the potentiality for motion, and it possesses the form of a body – meaning substantial contiguity (al-ittiṣāl al-ǧawharī) – and it is a thing in actuality. There is much in this that alludes to the fact that every simple reality (basīṭ al-ḥaqīqa) must be all things in actuality. This is a noble conclusion and I have not found anyone on the face of the earth with knowledge of that.¹²⁴

And a simpler version linking this to the question of good and evil is broached in his epistle on the Incipience of the cosmos (ḥudūṯ al-ʿālam):

It is established that there are two sides in existence. The First Creator – magnificent is his mention – and prime matter. The first is pure good, and the second is pure evil insofar as it is in potentia, and thus is differentiated from pure non-existence. Insofar as it is potentiality for all contingent existents to be good per accidens, it is in contradiction to non-existence.¹²⁵

He consistently compares these views to the other binaries along the spectrum such as ascent and descent or exoteric and esoteric.¹²⁶ Providence dictates that the function of the existence of the cosmos is for God to do the good and to manage the motion of the spheres. The highest goal of the building of this cosmos and managing the spheres and making the stars move and the sending of prophets and messengers from the heaven of revelation is to make the entirety of the cosmos good and to efface deficiency and evil from it.

For Mullā Ṣadrā, the created order is a monistic but modulated theophany. This is expressed in the final chapter of the discussion of divine simplicity in the theology. He describes the problem of the simple reality is the most difficult of issues in metaphysics.

Every simple reality is all existential things except what pertain to all deficiencies and non-existences [in themselves]. The necessary Being – exalted is he – is a simple reality, simple in every sense and he is all existence just as the totality of him is existence.¹²⁷

He then breaks this down into an explanation and a more detailed proof. The broad explanation is that simplicity does not amount to the simple transposition of contraries or a discussion of whether A is identical to not-B. Much of the discussion then proceeds on the basis of the logic of groups and Porphyryan trees with the example of the term ‘human’ and what that entails. He then moves onto God:

The Necessary Being insofar as it is a simple reality is the perfection of all things in the most noble and subtle of manners, nothing can be negated of it except deficiencies, contingencies, non-existences and habits [in themselves]. Since he is the perfection of everything and the perfection of a thing is more deserving of that thing than itself, he is the most deserving of any reality to be itself as it is true of it.

Now if one says, does the Necessary not have attributes that are negated of it such as his not having a body or not being a substance or an accident or having quantity or quality?

We say: all that reverts to the negation of deficiencies and privations and the negation of negation is existence and the negation of deficiency is the perfection of existence. So know that not one of these contingent quiddities possesses absolute existence, rather each of them is a limited existence, and what we mean by absolute is that which has no privational limitation associated with it, and by limited we mean its opposite.¹²⁸

He then reverts to the logical argument of what is entailed when one describes a human as a rational animal. Central to this is the definition of the terms ‘absolute’ and ‘limited’. Mullā Ṣadrā clarifies that he is using these terms not in their logical or philosophical terminology but in the way that mystics do (ʿind al-ʿurafāʾ) such that the absolute existence is the simple reality and the principle and cause of every limited existence (and not being qua being).¹²⁹ Considered from the perspective of the simple reality, there is only goodness and pure existence; but considered from the aspects of that reality in detail as limited existence then one finds deficiencies and privations and on this point Mullā Ṣadrā points to one Qurʾanic verse to make the distinction between a holistic understanding of the totality of existence and a more detailed one: Q. al-Anbiyāʾ 21.30 ‘the heavens and the earth were an undifferentiated whole and then we separated them out one from the other’, and ‘we made from water every living thing’.¹³⁰ Water stands from the divine mercy that existentiates all things.

He ends with a means to connect to the following discussion on the nature of the different divine attributes and how multiplicity occurs and how we can allow for opposites, privations, and deficiencies (including evils) to exist.

Existence is a singular simple reality that flows in all existents by differentiation, gradation of perfection and imperfection. Similarly, his real attributes such as knowledge, power, will, life, flow in every flow of existence in a way that those rooted [in knowledge] know. So all existents even minerals are living knowing conscious uttering praise, witnessing the existence of their Lord, cognisant of their creator and producer … This is alluded by his saying: ‘there is nothing but that it sings his praise but you do not understand their singing’ (Q. al-Isrāʾ 17.44).¹³¹

Monism that arises from divine simplicity ultimately explains why phenomenal evils that we experience – just like phenomenal multiplicity, discord, and strife – are in the ultimate analysis dissolved in the One if we only understood the true nature of existence.

4 Love and Sympathy

The final section of the discussion of providence relates to the nature of love that God has made innate to all existents so that they desire and return to their principle. It is an element of his theodicy that does not seem to have been taken up later.¹³² This section owes much to Ibn ʿArabī and earlier Sufi thinkers as well as the notions of Neoplatonic sympathy and motion inherited through Avicenna.¹³³ He begins with the latter’s Risālat al-ʿišq.¹³⁴ Everything in the world of generation and corruption, every deficiency and imperfection has inbuilt the desire and love for what perfects and completes it. All beings are aware of this. As Mullā Ṣadrā puts it:

It is necessary in divine wisdom and lordly providence and in the beauty of governance and the generosity of the providential order that in every existent there is love so that through that love it may acquire the perfection appropriate to it and a desire to acquire what it lacks. This is the cause for the whole of the order and the beauty of the hierarchy in the governance of every single individual. This love exists in every one of the things that exist necessarily such that it is concomitant to it and cannot be separated from it. If it were possible to separate it from it from one, then it would have need for another love which would preserve the first love … So love flows in all existents and in their parts.¹³⁵

Every beloved is the face of the divine, and all love and desire for the beloved reverts back to God.¹³⁶

Mullā Ṣadrā moves onto consider the example of the human and the microcosmic nature of the human within a modulated but monistic system – while also considering why it is important to pay attention to the ʿulamāʾ. Starting with a citation of Ibn ʿArabī following al-Ġazālī’s theodicy, he opts for the more explicitly monistic homologies of God, the cosmos, and the human drawing on Ibn ʿArabī whom he cites:

Know that everything that a person conceives is himself and none other. It is not possible for a knower to conceive of the True One except by what he has manifest from himself. The human who is Adam is a term for the totality of the cosmos since it is the microanthropos (insān ṣaġīr) and he is encapsulated in the microcosm. The cosmos is encompassed in the potentiality of the human in the perception of multiplicity, and insofar as he is the macrocosm, perception of his form and his anatomy can encompass it, sustained by the power of his spirituality. As God has arranged in him all that is external to him from among all that is not God. So every part of him is arranged as the reality of a divine name which projects onto him and is manifest from that, such that his entire hierarchy are the divine names, not baring any. Hence, Adam emerged from the name ‘Allāh’ since this name includes all the divine names, just as the human, even if he is a small body, encompasses all things even if he is smaller than them – but the term human is still applied to him. Just as it is possible for a camel to enter the eye of the needle – and it is not impossible – because smallness and largeness are accidents of the individual that do not void the essence of a thing and do not make it something else. The power that is appropriate to creating a camel that can be small enough even to fit in the eye of a needle provides hope for all that they may enter paradise. Similarly, the human, despite his body being smaller than the cosmos, encompasses the totality of the realities of the macrocosm which is why the wise call the cosmos the macroanthropos. And so there is nothing that is not manifest in the cosmos that is also not manifest in its summation. Knowledge conceives of its objects, and it is an essential quality of a knower. His knowledge is his form and on it was Adam created as God created Adam in his form.¹³⁷

Humans are especially inclined towards desire and love and this inbuilt motivation within them leads to difference and discord and the quest for different beloveds. Sometimes that inclines humans to choose what is not in their best interests. But God has placed that love as well as the choice and will in humans to adopt either the good or the bad.¹³⁸ It is thus the function of the perfect human, and of mystics and hieratics, to resolve this complexity of beloveds and see that all are mirrors and theophanies of the single Beloved; just as an insightful person can see through the mirage (sarāb) and discern that it is not water but the reflection of the sky, so too can the mystic see that the multiple phenomenal existents that present themselves to us in this world are but ‘portions of the theophanies of the truth and manifestations of her perfections and her names in entities and in the mirrors of things’.¹³⁹

Love – erotic motion – accounts not only for the descent of being from God but also for its ascent and reversion. It also demonstrates the principle of accord and connection against discord and strife, overcoming plurality in search of unity. It resolves multiplicity as well as the problem of relative and parasitic evils. Mystics and Sufis have a major role in understanding this and indeed in teaching such a theodicy and it is therefore not surprising that Mullā Ṣadrā culminates his discussion with the grades of love and desire for God that the mystic has.

Human love is of three kinds: the greatest, the middling and the lesser. The greatest is the desire for meeting God and yearning to grasp her essence, her attributes, and her acts. This yearning only occurs in mystics and the comparison of the loves, desires, and yearning of people to mystics is like the comparison of children’s love and desire for games to adults in their pleasures and motivation.¹⁴⁰

All humans have love innate in their disposition as well as desire and the wish even to be dominant. The task is then to realise one’s humanity to perfect one’s rational soul so that one can achieve the highest sense of love. The mystic who has realised this then considers his paradise to be in the here and now – as well as in the afterlife – because his love has internalised the divine presence and therefore at times, he appears like the wise fool laughing at the commonality for their follies, their sins, their fear of punishment and of the hellfire and especially the folly of chasing after the material but fleeting pleasures of the world – false beloveds.¹⁴¹ The task of the person who has realised her humanity in this life is to become like the lover who is purely focused on the beloved and does not become distracted by this world and its ephemeral attachments and carnal desires.¹⁴² The lover understands that true pleasures are disembodied. It is not worthy of a creature of intellect and love to be like the beasts of the earth and desire the life of this world that will perish:

The person of knowledge knows that the ways of the afterlife are more luminous, more ecstatic, and more intense than the pleasures of this world since those things are real and everlasting while these this-worldly things are vain and perishing. The Prince of the Believers (ʿAlī), peace be with him, said: The hoarders of wealth die but the knowers are alive, everlasting over the duration of time, even while their persons are missed, their effect remain found in the hearts.¹⁴³

5 Conclusion

Mullā Ṣadrā’s discussion of providence intersects with many important aspects of his philosophical and philosophical theological systems. It demonstrates his debt to his predecessors in the Neoplatonic tradition mediated by Avicenna and the Theologia Aristotelis. It focuses upon another example of why modulated monism – mediated by his use of Ibn ʿArabī – is so central to his vision of metaphysics. And it shows how his method and approach to philosophy is tempered by a concern to understand reality in its totality, using a hermeneutics that seeks to read all that can be read – the cosmos, the human, and the revealed scripture – in order to become who one is. It is in those acts of reading and understanding that one finds oneself. Evil as an element of phenomenal reality is not only fleeting but a focus upon its ‘reality’ as well as upon discord and strife represents a process of ‘reification’ whereby humans fail in their fundamental quest to grasp being. Mullā Ṣadrā’s theodicy, located as it is within his monism and his deployment of the Plotinian notion of eros in the cosmos, must therefore be seen in terms of his wider philosophical project of tasting reality through direct experience and overcoming our embodied phenomenal selves through an attachment to the One, of seeing the providential theophany of the Beloved in the cosmos.

Given his own commitments to the nature of philosophy as a way of life lived with spiritual exercises directed towards the Beloved True One, one needs to appreciate the coherence and indeed aesthetics of his theodicy in those terms. For the more pastorally-minded and those whose theological commitments are much phenomenally centred on the embodied present, it will not seem as if Mullā Ṣadrā has resolved the problem of evil, explained why divine providence deployed by a wise and good God can possibly entertain evil and suffering of people in this world, or even how the divine decree can allow for the mere existence of evil that would seem to determine human acts and detract from their responsibilities for their actions. While the problem of evil remains a nagging one for contemporary philosophers and theologians, Mullā Ṣadrā’s solution nevertheless articulates a coherent and quite creative way for explaining not just a narrow issue of why people suffer or experience pain but rather how what we perceive as evils and the totality of our perceptions both mistaken and correct relate to the larger (unified, modulated but singular) order of being as the theophany of a good, wise, and loving God.