Islamic Philosophy from Its Origin to the Present: Philosophy in the ...

The Question of Existence and Quiddity and Ontology 81
the concept and reality of wuj¶d. The most metaphysical of these views
sees wuj¶d as the absolute, single Reality beside which there is no
other reality; yet there are other realities that, although nothing in
themselves, appear to exist because they are theophanies of the single
Reality, which alone Is as the absolutely unconditioned wuj¶d.
Later Islamic philosophy, following upon the wake of the teachings
of Ibn S¥nå, displays a remarkable richness of metaphysical, philosophical,
and theological teachings concerning the structure of reality,
the rapport between unity and multiplicity, and the relation between
wuj¶d and måhiyyah. All of these schools have sought to demonstrate
the unity of the Divine Principle and the relation of the world of
multiplicity to that Principle. 50 Among these schools, which include
not only the Ash‘arites and the Peripatetics but also Ismå‘¥l¥ philosophers
and theologians, ishråq¥ theosophers, and the various schools of
Sufism, the “transcendent theosophy” associated with Mullå S • adrå
represents a particularly significant synthesis of vast proportions.
Therein one finds the echo of centuries of debate and analysis concerning
wuj¶d and måhiyyah and the fruit of nearly a millennium of both the
thought and spiritual experience of Muslim philosophers and gnostics.
In this school there is but one Reality, that of wuj¶d. There are
not existing objects related to other existing objects. The very existence
of objects is their relation to that one wuj¶d that partakes of modes and
gradation as do rays of light, modes, and gradation from which the
mind abstracts the måhiyyåt. There is in the universe nothing but the
Reality of wuj¶d.
It might of course be asked how in such a perspective one can
avoid identifying the world with God and what happens to the central
thesis of the transcendence of God emphasized so much by Islam. The
answer is provided by the distinction that the “Pahlaw¥ sages” make
between the “negatively conditioned” (bi-shar†-i lå), “non-conditioned”
(la bi-shar†), and “conditioned by something” (bi-shar†-i shay˘) stages of
wuj¶d. These aspects were originally applied by Na∑¥r al-D¥n al-apple¨s¥
to måhiyyah, which can be considered as negatively conditioned, that
is, in a complete purity in itself, or as nonconditioned, as indeterminate
in the sense that it can or cannot be associated with something, or as
conditioned by something, that is, associated with some other concept. 51
These distinctions have been applied by the “Pahlaw¥ philosophers”
to wuj¶d. Considered as such, negatively conditioned wuj¶d is
the Absolute, Pure, and Transcendent Being of God. Nonconditioned
wuj¶d is both the most universal concept and reality of being according
to Sufi metaphysics and the expansive mode of wuj¶d that is indeterminate
and yet can determine itself into various forms according