THE PASSIONS OF THE SOUL IN THE METAMORPHOSIS OF BECOMING

Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology in Dialogue

VOLUME 1

Founder and Editor: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

Co-Editor: Gholam Reza A' awani, Sadra Islamic Philosophy Research Institute

Editorial Board: Mehdi Aminrazavi, Department of Classics, Philosophy and Religion, Mary Washington

College Angela Ales Bello, Rome

Patrick Burke, Department of Philosophy, Seattle University William Chittick, Comparative Studies, State University of New York at Stony Brook Nader El-Bizri, Dept. of History & Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge

Lenn E. Goodman, Department of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University Idris Samawi Hamid, Department of Philosophy/Religion, Colorado State University

Hassan Hanafi, Department of Philosophy, College of Arts, Cairo University James G. Hart, Department of Religious Studies, Indiana University

Walter Lammi, Department of English, The American University in Cairo Robert D. Sweeny, Department of Philosophy, John Carroll University

Seyyed Mostafa Mohnqoq Damad Ahmad Abadi, Sadra Islamic Philosophy Research Institute

Reza Davari Ardakani, Sadra Islamic Philosophy Research Institute Ibrahim Dinani, Sadra Islamic Philosophy Research Institute

Seyyed Mohammed Khamenei, Sadra Islamic Philosophy Research Institute

The Passions of the Soul in the Metamorphosis of Becoming

Edited by

Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning

• ,. SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-90-481-6359-5 ISBN 978-94-017-0229-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-0229-4

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved © 2003 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2003 Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st edition 2003

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording

or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception

of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered

and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

INAUGURAL STUDY

ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA I The Human Soul in the Metamorphosis of life

SECTION ONE THE SOUL IN ITS PASSIONS

vii

ix

xix

3

SA YYID MUHAMMAD KHAMENEI I Phenomenology of Soul in Mulla 1 7 Sadra's School

WILLIAM C. CHITTICK I The In-Between Reflections on the Soul in the 29 Teachings of Ibn 'Arabi

KATHLEEN HANEY I The Three Movements of the Soul According to Anna- 39 Teresa Tymieniecka

ANGELA ALES BELLO I The Human Being and its Soul in Edith Stein 57 NADER EL-BIZRI I Avicenna's De Anima, Between Aristotle and Husser! 67 MEHDI AMINRAZA VI I Avicenna's (Ibn Sina) Phenomenological Analysis of 91

How the Soul (Nafs) Knows Itself ('ilm al-hiidiiri)

v

VI TABLE OF CONTENTS

SECfiON1WO THE SPHERES OF THE MIND

GHOLAM REZA A'A W ANI I Intentionality in Husserl and Mullii Sadrli 101 SAYYID MUSTAFA MUHAQQIQ DAMADI Some Notes on the Problem of 113

Mental Existence in Islamic Philosophy GOLAM HOSSEIN IBRAHIM DINAN! I The Copulative Existence 119 SACHIKO MURATA I Good and Evil in Islamic Neo-confucianism 125 WALTER LAMMI I Gadamer on the Cultic 135 HASSAN HANAFI I Soul, Body and the Spirit --Phenomenology of Medicine 145

SECTION THREE FLUX AND STASIS

ARTUR PRZYBYSLAWSKI/ The Bow of Heraclitus: A Reflection on the 155 Language of Becoming

JOSEPH ELLUL I The Distinctio Realis Between Essence and Existence in the 161 Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas

JACEK SURZYN I Concurrence between Husserl's Conception of the Essence 171 and Duns Scotus' Theory of Common Nature

NANCY MARDAS I Essence and Existence in Phenomenological Ontology: 183 Roman Ingarden

IDRIS SAMA WI HAMID I The Polarity of Existence and Essence According to 199 Shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsii'I

SECTION FOUR MORE ABOUT THE PHENOMENON AND ITS UNVEILING

MOHAMMAD AZADPUR I Unveiling the hidden, On the Meditations of 219 Descartes and Ghazzali

REZA DA V ARI ARDAKANI I A Shared Quest Between Islamic Philosophy and 241 Phenomenology

APPENDIX/ Programs of Two Symposia Held in the Institute's Program of Islamic 24 7 Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology in a Dialogue at the American Philosophical Association Meetings of December 2000 and December 2001.

INDEX OF NAMES 249

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The present collection of studies came about partly in response to my launching of the Institute's program into a dialogue between Occidental Phenomenology and Islamic Philosophy in March 2000.

My paper and those of Mohammad Azadpur, William Chittick were presented at our first symposium, which was held on December 29, 2000 at the Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association in New York City. Sachiko Murata's paper was presented at a second symposium held on December 28, 2001 at the Eastern Division Meeting American Philosophical Association held in Atlanta, Georgia

The papers of Sayyid Muhammad Khamenei, Gholam Reza A'awani, Sayyid Mustafa Muhaqqiq Damad, Golam Hossein Ibrahim Dinani, Reza Davari Ardakani, Artur Przybyslawski, Jacek Surzyn, and Joseph Ellul stem from our 51st International Phenomenology Congress held in Rome in June 2001. The papers of Idris Samawi Hamid, Hassan Hanafi, Mehdi Aminrazavi, Nader El-Bizri, Nancy Mardas, Walter Lammi, Angela Ales Bello, and Kathleen Haney were contributed upon special invitation.

Our special thanks go to our publisher Kluwer for offering us an outlet for our specialized work through this new book series. Ryan Walthers graciously consented to copy edit the manuscripts and Nader EI-Bizri to help establish the proper forms of the Arabic names, particularly as given in the index. Senorita Aurelia Valero helped Claire Ortiz Hill put the finishing touches on the manuscript to make it camera ready.

Robert Wise should be thanked for the proofreading. To Jeff Hurlburt we owe thanks for a careful and dedicated attention to the entire project.

Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

VII

PREFACE

ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

PREFACE

Over the millennia, philosophy has sought the ultimate understanding of the full human horizon of existence as well as of human destiny and the ultimate sense of it All. The innumerable attempts to grasp the answers to these questions, each taking its own approach and having its own preconceptions, have engendered a range of different philosophical approaches, one so broad that seemingly unbridgeable rifts impede possible, cross-fertilizing communication. And yet the themes of all of them, e.g., the immeasurable cosmos, life, the individual being bearing life, the human person within his or her world, and his or her longings to transcend that world, the human mind, its pragmatic/cognitive tools, creative, speculative pursuits, remain constants. The logos they all share is one.

It is not that no vicarious sharing of intuitive glimpses by the proponents of the varied doctrines and methods in question occurs. The history of philosophy is in fact marked by the juxtaposing of theories and approaches having different trajectories and by the mixing of insights, the crossing of borders, etc. However, what is greatly needed is in-depth comparison of the various doctrines and a reflection on the contrasting, opposing, clashing perspectives that seeks foundations for all of them in the human, creative condition, in that microcosm that extends its tentacles toward the two great infmities: the external infmity of the cosmos and the internal infinity of transcending destiny.

By going back to the primeval logos as it differentiates itself with the origin and unfurling of life, we may retrieve these common roots that all philosophies share.

In order to promote dialogue between Occidental phenomenology and Islamic philosophy on this deep level of the logos, we are inaugurating this book series.

At the launching of this series under the title of Occidental Phenomenology and Islamic Philosophy in a Dialogue, a statement of its raison d'etre, its aim, its place within comparative scholarship, and the ways and means of its expected realization is in order.

By no mere juxtaposing of the so-called "methods" and the axioms they derive from, nor even by establishing historical filiations of ideas and the comparison of concepts, may we find the groundwork for metaphysical dialogue among philo-

XI A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.) , The Passions of the Soul in the Metamorphosis of Becoming, XI-XVII © 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

XII ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

logos at its constructive shining forth. The human creative condition is the "place"­sphere-arena that our phenomenology of life in its ontopoiesis has proposed as the ground for this work. It is upon that ground that the World Phenomenology Institute has been engaging in dialogues with philosophies proceeding from different assumptions and cultural settings. Thus, the dialogue between phenomenology and Islamic philosophy upon the common ground of the human creative condition within the unity-of-everything-there-is-alive that we are proposing has the benefit of having an already fruitful mode to follow.

However, some ambiguities are attached to the very title of our new book series. First of all, the very term 'Islamic philosophy,' and that of 'Occidental phenomeno­logy' too, may engender controversy. In fact, the term 'Islamic' covers a vast field of divergent philosophical doctrines, schools of thought, individual thinkers, and sages whose philosophical ideas not only spring from different insights, but also in their expression are differently motivated or influenced by different theological tendencies, mystical practices, and apologetic intentions. The best example of the profound difficulty of setting these philosophical views on a common plane is the tension still reigning between reason and faith that underlies all possible under­takings. Moreover, some great thinkers who were not Muslims, but were Christians or Jews --e.g., Maimonides (Musil Ibn Maymiin) -- belong to a once prevailing Greco-Arabie tradition in sciences and philosophy. So the great question arises: How can we overcome this major obstacle of finding a common denominator of diverse perspectives as the ground for a dialogue? It is, indeed, as I stated above, not along the lines of a comparison of methods, approaches, and doctrinal ideas that the point of basic affinity is to be found.

A similar ambiguity clings to the expression 'Occidental phenomenology.' Phenomenology and Islamic philosophy have been brought together into the comparative arena by the great, penetrating, and inspired scholar Henry Corbin. Over against a prevailing historical approach, by referring to the phenomenology of Husserlian inspiration that focuses on the intelligible Wesenschau, Corbin has, as is well known, initiated a novel approach to Islamic philosophies. But since Corbin's time, phenomenology has flourished as a field of research, and what is nowadays called "phenomenology" has expanded into numerous doctrines and schools of thought, some of which maintain a merely tangential relation to Husserl's intentions and program.

Significantly, however, in this respect Corbin's approach to his subject matter and its scope is by no means outdated. His truly remarkable work is centered on the interpretation of Islamic texts rather than upon comparative analysis. Moreover, Corbin seems to have been the first thinker to have truly applied Husserl's "principle of all principles." Indeed, by avoiding identification with any particular type of intuition (e.g., "eidetic" intuition in which intellective "essences" are accessible to experiencing subjects), he has, without mentioning it, assumed Husserl's "principle of all principles," which encompasses more than the experiential yielding of intellective essential insight, for it holds all types of experiences presenting themselves in evidential intuitions to be legitimate objects of inquiry. In the course of phenomenology's reception, in which the particular dimensions of experience as brought up by the great master step by step became geared to the full scope of the

EDITOR'S PREFACE XIII

domain of the world and the body, Husserl's "principle of all principles" remained unheeded. With his intellective-intentional assumptions, Husserl, himself a deeply spiritual and religious person, did not come to articulate, to thematize, spiritual experiences philosophically, and his scarce references to them lie to the side of his philosophical corpus. With the exception of such philosophers as Edith Stein, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Jean Hering, Dietrich von Hildebrandt, Max Scheler, Emmanuel Levinas, Michel Henry, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, this has been also the case with the majority of his followers.

Yet, the principle of all principles has to be taken seriously. Furthermore, as obvious as it is that Husserl's phenomenological ideas developed

on a steady course as their author himself progressively advanced in his reflections (with an intellective-objective-emphasis, yes), and as much as that's being essential is acknowledged, the subjective, inner development of the inquirer-philosopher has come to be strictly severed from its fruit. As appropriate as this may be for certain types of cognitive procedures (e.g., logical inquiry}, the inward bond between the experiencing subject and the results of his or her progress is in other types of experience (e.g., moral, aesthetic, spiritual) essential to their exfoliation and should not be eliminated from the usual phenomenological field of inquiry. In contrast, by employing his particular brand of phenomenological approach (namely, by putting all types of intuitions to work to deal with experiences in which they evidence themselves and that otherwise fall outside the framework of the intellective-natural realm), Henry Corbin has been able to bring to light the esoteric content of the spiritual, visionary, mystical experiences of Islamic sages. In this fashion, he has paved the royal road leading to phenomenology's functioning as a universal philosophy in which the entire universe of human experience is to be given due consideration.

However, being absorbed in transmitting the wealth of esoteric Islamic experience to the Occidental mind, Corbin's work did not proceed further towards philosophically vindicating the realm of the spiritual, the esoteric, the sacred. At base our dialogue aims precisely at such a "vindication."

This task comes up squarely against the question that I put at the outset of this argument, namely that of how we can find a common denominator for the great variety of philosophical doctrines --now not only Islamic doctrines, but also those basic to phenomenology-- so that we may enter into a full-fledged philosophical dialogue. There is a more fundamental question, however, that of what aim we are proposing for this dialogue.

The answer to this question is: Our aim is primarily neither to contribute to comparative studies, nor to fmd a cultural "bridge," but rather, animated by the genuine "philosophical eros," we are prompted to seek the "truth ofthings."

II

The question arises as to which concrete precepts should guide such an undertaking toward its fruition in insights and intuitions that renew both philosophical traditions.

It has often been pointed out that in the Middle Ages there was not a division between Occidental and Islamic/ Arabic philosophies. On the contrary, interchange,

XIV ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

dialogue, and cross-pollination took place among the great thinkers. Then came the estrangement.

It has also been pointed out that one of the main reasons for the estrangement between the succeeding Occidental and Islamic philosophies was the excessive rationalization/intellectualization on the part of Occidental philosophers pursuing Descartes' ideal of "clear and distinct ideas" modeled after those of geometry. This ideal has also been seen as responsible for the disjunction between mind and body that occurred in Occidental philosophy and resulted in a disruption of the metaphysical vision of the Unity of Being heretofore shared by both sides.

It is the issue of this continuity in the extending of reality, of the vision of its infmitely expanding horizon, that we shall have to consider while we try to establish principles for building a bridge between the two disrupted traditions.

When it comes to Phenomenology broadly speaking, we have to consider Husserl's aspirations, -- a positive inheritance from Descartes-- for a proper legitima­tion of philosophical ideas being considered. This means: a) clarification of the philosophical procedure; b) its legitimation with respect to its mode of cognitive givenness; and, lastly, c) the need to bear in mind the intuitive level of the insights being clarified.

To enter into a dialogue with phenomenology, these three principles of clarifica­tion of the data of cognition have to be kept in mind. They in fact also lie very intimately at the heart of the reflection of Islamic philosophers such as Mulla Sadra. These traditions also share the main precept for the legitimacy of intuition itself: one is to focus directly upon the object of inquiry, leaving to the side all preconceptions. This precept is merely a sharper way of defining an activity that metaphysicians have always performed naturally. So much for phenomenology's conditions for adequately confronting Islamic philosophy and phenomenology. Great efforts to come to terms with these requirements are already manifest in the work of great Islamic philosophers like Mulla Sadra.

As for the requirements emanating from Islamic philosophy, they principally concern the expanse of the field in the vast realm of the continuity of being. In the main, these requirements appear to be:

a) First of all, on the one extreme, the intuitive approach to the microcosm has to yield access and display relevancy to the approach to the macrocosm;

b) On the other extreme, it has to yield access and display relevancy to trans­cendence (the divine);

c) In addition, while the microcosm has to be clearly intuited, with the intuitive grasp of it clarified, its formulation has to be sufficiently flexible, avoiding sharp separation of concepts, to allow for all types of experience to be taken into account. It is important to emphasize that on this point we once again meet with the main device of Husserlian phenomenology: "the principle of all principles," which admits all types of experiences evidenced in intuitions into consideration, pursuing clarification in the formulation in each type of experience given. Emphasis is not placed upon concepts, but rather upon the intuitive insights that they convey. Therefore, an area of indeterminacy must surround concepts.

EDITOR'S PREFACE XV

Keeping in mind the provisos on both sides, we propose to have the dialogue proceed in terms of a coming together in the intuitive differentiation of the real, for both sides share faith in intuition.

This is what we postulate concerning ways of proceeding, approach, or method. Bearing al this in mind, we can see how we may compare singular insights and concepts and yet fail to get to the "heart of things," since that resides only on the level of the constructive logos, where each singular object is revealed within its full context.

III

Thus, the following question emerges: At what level of the logos of phenomena should our comparison of insights into both these philosophical movements appropriately proceed?

In anticipation of our exfoliation of this issue, let me here bring in the main points leading toward the answer. As we know, Husserl delved into the phenomenon of reality in three phases. The first phase involved envisaging reality in its permanent distinctive structures, its actual manifestation. At work in this phase is the eidetic intuition of immovable structures. The second phase led to a clarification of the cognitive status of these structures, their appearance in subjective acts of consciousness. A special intuition attuned to the nature of subjective acts of consciousness itself as their bearer was set to work to grasp and thematize objectivity as it appears in the structures of consciousness itself. In the third phase, the process-like subjective constitution of the objectivity, namely, the nature of the operations leading from intellective pure consciousness down to the life-world participation in the operations of the body, came to the fore. This third phase of phenomenological inquiry brings out the intellective concatenation of mental operations in which the world oflife is established.

However, what about the perspective of becoming in which the inner ontic operations establishing beingness in linea entis occur as well as cognitio? Husserl did not reach this level, at which the foundation of the phenomenal lies.

Here, we fmd a point crucial to our new attempt to bring Occidental phenomeno­logy and Islamic philosophy together. Even though Husserl progressively expanded along its strictly rational grain the schema of constitution of reality in the cognitive enterprise of human beings, Husserlian phenomenology has remained within the range of a strictly rational/intellective beacon.

It could not reach either the further parameters of cosmic reality or spiritual realms beyond the rational/intellective rules of the constitution. Hence, any possible dialogue between phenomenology and Islamic philosophy was first destined to remain truncated on both ends. In addition, the general philosophical interests that could be brought together for comparison had not yet been situated within similar general parameters, and that meant that the inquiry could not but remain uncertain as concerns that comparison.

The situation changes drastically with the advent of a further development of the Husserlian inspiration in the form of the Phenomenology of Life in its ontopoiesis. This relatively young enterprise is essentially inspired by the same great striving on the part of the master Husserl to reach to the first and last foundations of the genesis

XVI ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

of reality and existence. It reaches, however, beyond the lines of inquiry initially outlined and maintained by him.

As I pointed out in my article "A Note on Edmund Husserl's Late Breakthrough to the Plane of Nature-Life, Completing His Itinerary," in the World Phenomeno­logy Institute's encyclopredia of phenomenology, Phenomenology World Wide, Foundations --Expanding Dynamics --Life Engagements (2002), in his last reflec­tions, Husser! himself saw the inadequacy of his cognitively bound course and discovered a realm of life beneath it. However, with his initial assumptions he was incapable of thematizing it and of bringing forth the true face of the phenomena "unveiled." To do this has been precisely the task of the Phenomenology of Life in its ontopoiesis. Viewed from its platform, the human cognitive, constitutive enterprise finds its roots and binding links in creative undertakings that make human beings human inasmuch as this enterprise meets their congenital reverberations with the cosmos, on the one hand, and their innermost nostalgic aspirations toward the transcendent, sacred quest, toward the divine on the other.

The emerging ontopoietic vision of the phenomenology of life constitutes the fourth, post-Husserlian, phase of phenomenology, which offers a particularly fitting and fruitful opportunity for dialogue between phenomenology and Islamic thought. With this essential extension of the parameters of phenomenology to a level on which the "unveiling of the phenomena" at last reaches its proper platform, phenomenology may enter full-fledgedly into a discourse with Islamic philosophy.

Provided that it is carried out in accordance with the principles that I have set up in the preface, i.e., with an appropriate elucidation of foundational assumptions and the intuitive sphere of evidences in each, and accepting the ensuing "truncated" perspectives, comparative work between Occidental phenomenology and Islamic philosophy may be fruitfully conducted in reference to each of the above distinguished phenomenological phases as represented by Husser! and his followers. However, in what I am proposing, the stress is on the particular focus of the fourth phase of phenomenology, on the ontopoiesis of life, which grounds and comprises them all. The ontopoietic foundation of reality indeed reaches to the origins of the "objective" and "subjective" perspectives and completes them.

The ontopoiesis of life indeed informs the complete edifice of the phenomeno­logical endeavor underlying and founding all its spheres, laying down its primogenital field. Consequently, the foundational, pristine level of the logos of life thematized in the ontopoietic ciphers offers the ultimate metaphysical field for full­fledged dialogue.

I shall conclude my introduction by tentatively outlining its context. From what has been said above, it should be clear why we have chosen the subject of the soul for the first volume of our new series. The soul plays the role of the microcosm for both Islamic thought and the phenomenology of life. This fulcrum of our experience spreads its rays to both opposite infinities: the incommensurable logos of the macrocosm in one direction, and the unfathomable infinite of the sacred/divine in the other.

Proceeding from this center may contribute to digging deeper into reality than the preconceptions of clashing philosophical views allow and may yield a rich harvest of philosophical wisdom that can be pooled together.

EDITOR'S PREFACE XVII

The expertise of the members of our editorial board in both phenomenology and Islamic philosophy speaks for itself. We are grateful to them for having graciously consented to lend their support to this venture. It is incumbent upon them and our authors and collaborators to bring this great comparative endeavor to fruition.

Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

INTRODUCTION

THE UNVEILING AND THE UNVEILED

UNCOVERING THE CORNERSTONES FOR

METAPHYSICAL DIALOGUE

BETWEEN

OCCIDENTAL PHENOMENOLOGY

AND ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY

ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

THE UNVEILING AND THE UNVEILED

Uncovering the Cornerstones for Metaphysical Dialogue between

Occidental Phenomenology and Islamic Philosophy

PART ONE

All is the work of logos. Reason, spirit, life, human significance, partake of its innumerable lights. They manifest themselves in concrete phenomena within the orbit of living beings. Philosophy is one of those manifestations. Unique in its striving to reach cognitively behind the appearances in which phenomena manifest reality in their ultimate significance, with its differentiated questions, philosophy splits these lights. The human soul, through which all has to pass, the mind, the intellect, may see the logos clearly or dimly, through a glass darkly, or deviate from its rays. Hence, numerous philosophical attempts reach it only fragmentarily. Yet logos is itself one.

Well versed in phenomenology and a profound connoisseur of Islamic philosophy, the great scholar Henry Corbin introduced phenomenology to the study of Islamic philosophy with incomparable subtlety and saw the possibility of bringing these two great lines of thought together by appealing to the premise underlying the Husserlian attempt to ground the changeable, elusive world of appearances at the deeper level at which these appearances find articulation in a subjacent and lasting rationale.

According to Corbin's conception: "Phenomenology consists in 'saving the appearance,' saving the phenomenon, while disengaging or unveiling the hidden reality that shows itself beneath this appearance, the Logos or principle of the phenomenon. Phenomenology is thus to tell the hidden, the invisible present beneath the visible. It is to make the phenomenon show forth itself such as it shows itself to the subject to whom it reveals itself." 1

Corbin goes on to correlate that definition with the works of Islamic thinkers:

Is not then phenomenological research what our old mystical treatises design a kashf al-mahyjib, the unveiling or revealing of that which is hidden? Is it not also what is designed by the term ta 'wil, so fundamental in the spiritual hermeneutic of the Quran? Ta 'wit is the prowess of tracing something to its origin, to its archetype (Persian: chizi-ra be-asl-e KhwOd rasdnidan ). In the course of taking it back to its origin, it is made to pass through level after level of being, and it is this manner that the structure of an essence is released (which does not in any sense mean structuralism). Structure in this sense means the tartib al-mazdhir, the system of the forms of manifestation of a given science.2

XXI A-T. Tymienieclw (ed.), The Passions of the Soul in the Metamorphosis of Becoming, XXI-XLIV © 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

XXII ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

Two points are brought forth here. They are intimately correlated and of utmost significance to what we are proposing. The first concerns identifying the basis being sought for the appearances with the logos. The second makes specific reference to the ancient treatises of the Islamic mystics but, as we shall see, also applies to the overall pursuit of this logos. It is a matter of "tracing something to its origin, to its archetype," of following it "through level after level of being." Indeed, as we shall see, the phenomenological quest by no means quickly hands over the structure of the essence of the phenomena. Quite the contrary is this case, and there it meets squarely with Corbin's statement expressing the affinity between Islamic thought and phenomenology. In the present study, I shall attempt to illustrate and substan­tiate Corbin's statement, to chart the phenomenological itinerary through several levels of the constructive logos spanning the entire Husserlian investigation and beyond.

This elucidation will allow us to illustrate and clarify a common philosophico­metaphysical basis for dialogue. The formula of "unveiling" used by Corbin may be said to have been present in different guises throughout the history of metaphysics, from Parmenides to all the great thinkers of antiquity, whether Occidental metaphysicians or the great Islamic thinkers, through to our times. It is the logos of the phenomena which is at the center of our interest here.

The purpose of the projected dialogue extends beyond the comparative aim proclaimed by Corbin, yet is also narrower because it only focuses on the phenomenological body of thought. "Comparison" aims at the same depth of investigation that we propose and sets up the indispensable basis for moving on to the next level, the level of "dialogue" in my sense. This dialogue would consist of plumbing the depths of the notions being compared, penetrating down to their ciphers, that is, primal intuitions, and of seeking to unravel the coordinates of the latter. Namely, having determined the concordance of intuitions as embedded in two or more systems of thought, we should proceed by comparing the ways in which the context of this embedding, with the peculiar features and interdependencies it has within it, leads to differences in their formulation. This work of confronting the contexts should shed light that brings the intuitive, "essential" content into full disclosure and illuminates the darker aspects of the context itself. Since every primordial intuition partakes of its context in its exfoliation of meaning, it is of paramount significance to uncover an intuitive plane of the logos upon which the primordial intuition may be assessed until it is interpreted in its ciphering by the features that it acquires by being immersed within its context. This second step of our work, a dialogue between Islamic philosophy and phenomenological doctrine, between identical intuitions within different contexts, may contribute to renewing and invigorating input that will spur philosophical progress in general. This is the aim of our undertaking.

Yet, in the search for this ultimate, stable point of reference, the logos of the appearing phenomena has already been differentiated in three distinct phases of Husserl's work. Husserl first sought it in the dimension of the ideal structures subtending appearances; then, upon finding that level in need of a deeper substratum, he located it in the structures of human consciousness; and finally he

INTRODUCTION XXIII

apprehended it in the rules of the genesis of appearances within the process of consciousness itself.

In this last development, Husser) was breaking through to a further level, though one never unfolded by him. Rather that work has been completed by recent phenomenological work, something that I shall return to later on.

Furthermore, while maintaining allegiance to his thoughts, Husserl's numerous followers have blurred his classic distinctions in their personal reflections and brought new insights. Consequently, in view of these developments, which unfolded after Corbin set forth his views, when talking in an in-depth way about phenomenology, we have to investigate anew its two principle foci for conceptualiz­ing: those of the phenomenon and the unveiling. These new perspectives, having been uncovered, should by now expand and metaphysically ground the great comparative perspective of Corbin. But, as a matter of fact, as I have pointed out in my preface, studying his presentations of Islamic thinkers, one clearly sees that he himself already extended the Husserlian search for the "essences" of the logos. As Professor Azadpur states in his study (Chapter XIX), in his presentations and interpretations of Islamic philosophers and sages Corbin did not confine himself to the "essential" analysis of Husserl's first period. As I explained in the preface, by spontaneous intuitions, he reached far beyond to the spiritual, mystical, and religious spheres. After what I have stipulated concerning the expansion of phenomenological vistas as the condition for a phenomenological approach adequate to meeting up with Islamic thought, it is clear that we have to ponder anew how the phenomenon, its manifesting, and its unveiling are to be understood. As we shall see, Corbin's twofold recipe regarding the discovery of phenomena in their fullness in the sphere of the logos finds particularly strong resonance in phenomenological philosophy.

THE PHENOMENON AND ITS APPEARANCE

Is not what we consider the "depth" of a literary work, a novel, a poem, an epic, an attempt to bring to light what is obscure in the entanglements in which the emotional, social, and cultural spheres of our lives and the lives of nations are caught, sometimes cataclysmically so? It is up to the sensitivity and perspicacity of the author to bring to the surface the hidden "reasons" for what has been puzzling and obscure in the manifestation of life and its ways. Hence, the same events or developments recurrently find new interpreters, and literary history, indeed history in general, social studies, etc., thus move forward .

They all attempt to bring to the light of human attention the authentic significance of realities obscured by their presenting of themselves in phenomenal appearances.

From another angle, in the fine arts we see the same striving to reveal the substructures subtending visible or audible phenomena, where appearances change depending on perspective, where light is cast on one side or on the other, but remains in its inspiration more intimately tied to one, with tendencies, modulations, intensities artistically inclined toward cheer or gloom, violence or serenity. Hence, depictions of historical scenes that emphasize types of people, portraits seeking to reveal the "hidden" and "true" nature of the object, etc. (Following Merleau-Ponty,

XXIV ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

who attributed Cezanne's style to his schizoid tendency, we would also consider the various personal psychic dispositions as possibly predisposing an artist's focus in our explication of how a particular style interprets seemingly regular appearance.) All of these quests have the same aim: revealing the pervading-but hidden-"true" ground of reality, those structures, rules, or blueprints regulating the apparent trans­formations of phenomenon that do not otherwise rise to the surface.

In short, the reality within which we live and that we ourselves are presents itself to us in a flux of appearances-sensual, pragmatic, psychologically experienced, imagined-which change as much with changing conditions as in the terms of their own transforming current. Yet, these shifts in appearances manifest a presumptive unifying set of articulations that make up a distinctive set of appearances. They manifest reality to us in distinctive "presumptively" firmly organized units which account for what we call the "phenomena of reality."

These phenomena exhibit both specific singular and presumptive general characteristics that, on the one side, are such as to make reality manifest, and on the other, are such as to cause the human mind receiving them to puzzle over those subjacent, presumptively lasting features of the phenomena that, while playing a role within the overall realm of the real, do not appear but seem, both in their discreteness and in their forceful, significant impact upon one another, to "carry" the appearances in their fleeting, yet recurring sequences, forms.

In its search for understanding, the human mind oscillates between what is obvious and what is mysteriou:;, what is hidden and what is manifest, what is visible and what is invisible. Its itinerary, from Parmenides' goddess and Heraclitus' hidden, through the great Platonic and Aristotelian lines, the neo-Platonists, Alfarabi, Avicenna, Mulla Sadra, Leibniz, Kant, Husser!, and Heidegger, on to the present-day thinking, is that of the metaphysical quest for the key by which to open the seemingly locked access to the stable, generative factors animating the fluctuating reality of life, the human soul, the world, the ultimate destiny of human beings. Does this never-ending striving to reach "first principles" mean that reality is inscrutable? That none of the competing propositions are valid, or that all of them are equally problematic because there is no such definitive ground graspable by the mind in their terms? Are we engaged in a never-ending chase? Be that as it may, it remains that the human mind is not to be quieted and that it exercises its powers in the ongoing search. This search is philosophy/metaphysics itself. Namely, to confront reality despite its obscurity for us, its hiddenness, mystery for us, and to struggle to render its authentic sense, the logos, from the veil of darkness in which it seems to be wrapped, this is the philosopher's vocation.

In the various modes of their attempts to accomplish this unveiling, philosophies diverge. Yet, in the unveiling itself, they commune. Being a select form of access to what is mysterious and obscured, each mode of unveiling allows what is unveiled to be seen only in accord with the ways of access afforded. What is revealed does not manifest itself in its "true" or pristine "nature." It comes to light within a set of per­spectives (e.g. those of Optics, Alhazen's Kitab al-manazir, Ibn al-Haytham) that the modes of access to it have granted, at its depth or level of "visibility" that these could mediate. This is the beingness --or the real--, which the set of intuitions that

INTRODUCTION XXV

the unveiling commands may transmit in this particular sphere. Hence, solidarity unmistakably exists between the unveiling modality and the unveiled that it yields.

This solidarity lies in various registers. If in biological research we see the physical or chemical composition of living plants or animals, it is because the visible shape and behavior that they manifest make us wonder about the unseen inner composition that would account for these. What they manifest within their circumambient milieu offers the wondering mind a springboard and appropriate inducement to this mind itself to release a special type of intuition that we conjecture to be the non-manifest, invisible counterpart to what is visible. ('Conjecture' is a term that I have introduced to denote the speculative seeing of the mind moving toward its "condition" on the basis of "essential" insight.) The mind has to conjure up these intuitions in order to find the causes, reasons, motivations for life, its ways of development and instances of growth, which are hidden in the generative and developmental spheres of life's dynamics, and in virtue of which the human mind assesses the fullness of the life manifested, or, to put it another way, assesses life manifested in its fullness.

Without this fullness, what is visible and obvious to the senses, what is manifested, would never shine forth in its manifestation into innumerable rationalities. Here is the logos of life that carries on the work of manifestation. Each of these rationales corresponds to a specific type of intuitive conjecture, that is, to the mode in which intuition may yield its projected aim, and to the level of the generative rationale of the living beings' developmental processes to which that intuition is directed by the inquiring mind-- which, as mentioned before, releases an appropriate intuitive ray according to the concordance between its assessment of the manifested and its own searching interest.

To state this succinctly, I shall repeat my metaphysical statement that, even as the logos of life is at work, dynamically deployed in innumerable concatenations in a constructive work hid in darkness away from the light of manifestation, it not only projects a scalar extension of the visible, audible, tangible, odoriferous, etc. exterior of what is manifested, along which exterior it may be investigated, offering the springboard for investigation, but being the constructive lHan behind that exterior, it also sets the human mind up as a mirror reflecting the network of levels of virtual intuitive proficiencies to be released by the human creative/discovering inventive genius that match the planes of the intuitive rationale of the hidden reality to be conjecturally unveiled. Mirabile dictu, in its unveiling of secreted levels of the manifestation before it, the human mind unveils its own otherwise hidden wealth and powers.

Indeed, it seems as if nothing manifested in the logos of life reposes completely "in itself." Everything points beyond, exciting the mind to conjecture its connections with what is not manifested. In its creative sweep, the imagination does not let the mind dwell entirely upon the obvious, manifested surface of life and excites it to seek for the generative, existential concatenations that it projects into what is hidden along the lines of its constitution as manifested.

In fact, it is in following the logoic concatenations of its constructive work that, excited by the imagination and stimulated by hints, the mind's inquisitiveness penetrates the junctures encountered in passing from manifest to unmanifested

XXVI ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

being, to being's real prerequisites, from one plane of the intuitive correlates of the manifested reality of a given phenomenon of life to the preceding or following plane, and from one item in the concatenations of life's prerequisites, or correlates, to others.

The logoic logic of uncovering corresponds to a certain kind of discovery. It is a logic which may follow the "essential" grain of the correlative logoic constitution of the hidden generative or deploying constitutions of what is manifested, apprehending its "essential" connectiveness to its own plane and other planes. However, this logic may also in practice arrest the attention of the mind with some hypostasized, prematurely featured, conceptualized generative elements that then simply mystify as to their significance.

Thus far, we have been talking about the unveiling of the phenomenon of reality. But the question presents itself of what belongs and what does not belong to reality. If by "real," we mean the phenomena of life, we must consider beings having both outward, (sensory) endowments, and inward, mental endowments (those of the aesthetic, intellective, fictive, and inventive spheres). Then, too, manifest reality is relentlessly on a course of transformation, of becoming and passing away. This course is essential to the nature of the phenomenon of the manifestation of reality, of life especially. Further, there is an orbit that we human beings, as phenomena of manifested life, consider to be on par with or even higher than the reality of life, and that extends the reach of the logos of life ' s concatenations in novel, specific, ways as are prompted and established by the imagination, which starting from what is given, what is manifested, calls for its completion within the encompassing context.

THE PHENOMENON IN ITS SELF-SAMENESS AND ITS EVER-EXTENDING

INTERDEPENDENCIES AND CONDITIONS

Before we enter into a discussion of the modalities of the unveiling, let us reflect on the surging or "giveness" of the phenomenon as such, what I would call the "presumptive" phenomenon.

The striking nature of a phenomenon merits attention on several points. First of all, there is the great philosophical puzzle that has endured in the thought of Parmenides, Plato, Alhazen, Descartes, Kant, etc. that of the theoretic doubt raised by the numerous modes of "appearing" itself about its reliability. This becomes a pragmatic question in life also, that of the reliability of the appearances of physical, mental, and social phenomena. The reason for this doubt is that while the being of a thing seems to reside it its sameness, in real experience a thing changes. So given the changing conditions of what appears, we have to ask where the self-sameness resides.

a) What we in phenomenological philosophy understand as a "phenomenon" of reality --whether concretely, corporeally, physically existing, or intentionally experienced, or invented, or created in its scientific objectivity-- is "given" in its presence, manifests itself to us as being graspable through our senses, feelings, intellect, and is present as an object, that is, as standing "before us" in its own "sameness" (ipseity}, in its own right.

INTRODUCTION XXVII

To see how such phenomena appear to stand on their own over and against our experience, it is enough to think of how in grazing against a tree we experience the sameness of its trunk, of how in falling from a chair as its leg breaks we experience the sameness of the ground and the sameness of the chair-in-relation to its maker or person who maintains it. Yet, let us first of all consider that the givenness in question is another facet of our "receptivity," that is, of our own "position" as experiencing beings in our own sameness, and how within an enduring network of the manifestation of the real in which our ways of "receiving" them as data of our experience interpenetrates their own modes of making themselves present, into the very ways that we experience them, that is, how they are "given" to us as data of experience insofar as this experience corresponds to them. In the modalities of its manifestation in presencing itself, reality is one vast, extensive experiential system that encompasses the modes of its "reception" as presence to the living subject. There is no split between manifestation and reception. On the contrary, a translacing an existential interaction of correspondence has to be assumed there.

Through both of them, at their very point of intersection, runs the thread of the logos of life in the attunement of mutual logoic networks of beingness which, by stimulating the creative imagination, offers logoic material (intuitions, notions, concepts) for appropriately ciphering the cluster of sense in which the logos of the phenomena is progressively unveiled at various levels of beingness. This ciphering is the means of the so-called "thematization" of meanings. The virtuality of the logos of the unveiling of the phenomena to propose new ciphers for it to grasp is, as will be shown, of crucial significance for the unveiling project and its fulfilment.

And yet, in their appearing, phenomena change their conditions, always appear changeable. Hence, inquiring into the status of reality in our experience, Parmenides' goddess distinguishes between the "true" and "false" reception of the presencing of the real. So, what is the nature of this self-sameness?

The goddess intimates that there is a hidden groundwork underlying these phenomena as they appear to us, that this may be inquired into and detected, unveiled. This hidden true nature of the phenomena and its unveiling has been an object of philosophical query for centuries, and there is a point to taking into account the many significant advances in seeking the hidden nature of the phenomena made by the philosophy of Husser! and Husserlians, and specifically by my phenomenology of life.

This raises the following crucial question: What is the nature of the selfsameness of phenomena? We can expect a road of direct inquiry into the matters at hand to be indicated to us.

b) Referring back to my previous explanations, the striking mode of the manifestation or presencing of phenomena to the experience of all living beings reaches its peak of fullness in human beings, where it possesses three essential features. For one thing, as mentioned before, the presencing itself as real stands out before the receiver in its seemingly independent, self-reposing, self-governing and self-reacting nature. However, as I have argued on several other occasions, the autonomy of its nature within the appearance does not support an assumption­easily made-of its existential "absolute" autonomy. On the contrary, every living being stays primordially-and every thing, referentially-within the unity-of-

XXVIII ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

everything-there-is-alive. Its self-sameness not only does not-to use Leibniz' term--entail all its "reasons", rather its formation is an outcome of innumerable elements of interdependency, interaction, interfusion within the conundrum of its life-circumambience, and through that within the entire schema of the evolutionary process of life. Nevertheless, if we would pursue each living being's status of selfsameness to its "generative womb,"3 even to the system of life, this selfsameness would never cease to shine forth in full. This points towards its ultimate originary "reasons," manifest through multiple levels of "conditions," continuing till the very system of the ontopoiesis of life, along with the primeval, inscrutable logos of the cosmic sphere, is unveiled.

In addition, within the system of life, the sameness of each being or thing abides in a system of existential correlation within the infinitely fluctuating generative stream of life. In short, the selfsameness in its "reposing-in-itself' is precisely the nature of the ever-changeable appearance holding them together within our correlated receptivity. The existential autonomy with which the phenomena of the real confront us is a characteristic of living beings. Their generation, growth, and activity come from "within." By their inward force, they enact the steps of their self­projected span of living existence. Fabricated things draw their sameness from their makers and consequently are existentially heteronomous in their relation to them. Inanimate nature altogether lacks singularized distinctiveness in itself. As such, its phenomenal appearance relates to its functional role within the compass of life. The entire sphere created by the human mind and its undertakings (e.g. social life) exists only in a heterogeneous fashion.

THE PHENOMENON OF BElNGNESS AND THE PASSIONS OF THE EARTH

--THE MICROCOSM BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH

We have assessed some of the main features of the phenomenon of the real glimmering from beneath its fluid appearances and we have identified it as such with living beingness. Focusing upon its existential autonomy, we have, moreover, emphasized how living beingness in its becoming process is essentially ingrown with its circumambient sphere, which it fashions even as it itself is partly conditioned that sphere. At this point, a significant situation of the living individual­beingness within the system of life, --and one of paramount importance for our argument, concerned as it is with preparing the way for possible dialogue between phenomenology and Islamic philosophy-- is to be acknowledged. As was already clearly brought out in the twentieth century, and has glaringly come to light in contemporary life and science, it is not only the circumambient sphere encircling singular, living beingness that is affected by its growth, development, and becoming, but the entire system of life in the range of life that that living beingness participates in, in what is today called the "ecosystem." Just as do the societies circumambient in human communal existence, so also ecosystems emerge, flourish, or decay with the emergence or disappearance of living individuals and species. This amounts to saying that beyond constituting their own worlds of life, living individuals essentially partake or participate in vaster areas of living existence.

INTRODUCTION XXIX

Yet another most significant feature of the phenomenon of the living beings that glimmer in their appearances is influx-inasmuch as their fitness to participate in this domain, with its conditions of existence within the circumambient sphere of life, down to their innermost attunement to existential conditions of their own surviving, down to their functional system as outlined by the selfsame autonomous nucleus (in fine, a function of existential conditioning), stem from the very ground upon and from which their existential entailments requirements of the earth are established. I have pointedly presented this elsewhere as the "passions of the earth." Living beingness appears as carrying within itself the prelife schema and life requirements that mother earth possesses.4 Through this essential existential network, the project of life appears subtended by the earth's participation in the forces of the universe, the cosmos. Hence, we may see living beingness as a filigree, a microcosmic counterpart of the great macrocosmic horizon.

THE HUMAN PHENOMENON

THE CREATIVE MICROCOSM5

Having apprehended the microcosmic nature of living beingness, let us now pass on to the special phenomenon of the human being. We should consider it to be of paramount importance to differentiate between the phenomenon of living beings­the whole realm of living beings that we with human, experiencing minds apprehend as selfsame phenomena-and those very beings to whom all the other phenomena, and they themselves too, appear as such, presence themselves, and manifest the vast expansion of reality. Within the unified schema of everything-there-is-alive, human beings appear to present a peculiar, unique type of phenomenon. They apprehend and receive the manifestation of reality in its fullness in a manner that permits them to control it, to direct it, as well as to project it, to undertake the generation of novel, distinctive, selfsame entities.

From such specific features, shall we not derive specific, new indications concerning the manifestation of a reality extending further than the reality of other types of being? In short, selfsameness in its "reposing in itself' is precisely the factor of the ever-changeable appearance that holds them together within our correlated receptivity.

In briefly discussing the appearances through which living beingness manifests its essential/existential relevance to its macrocosmic horizon of existence, it is of paramount significance to emphasize the scalar differentiation of the functional complexity of these beings and concurrently the gradation from the simplest to more elaborate circumambient areas of their concrete existence-their "worlds". Leaving this question aside for the time being, I now want to focus upon the specifically human areas of existence, the spheres of the human world of life, the intellective, aesthetic, moral, and spiritual areas that these appearances manifest.

Indeed, among living beings who, endowed with some understanding of their life-circumstances, manifest themselves in their autonomous nucleus, ascending not only toward self-prompted actions having different degrees of virtuality, but also constructing their own world of life through their behavior, there stands out the specific phenomenon of human beings, who not only may attune themselves to their

XXX ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

relatively confming circumstances and life situations but may also undertake to transform them according to their wishes.

Appearing as belonging naturally to the evolutionary scheme of life, human beings manifest themselves as emerging forth from the unity-of-everything-there-is­alive through their outstandingly efficacious position in it. They emerge from its fleeting appearances with a kind of outstanding autonomy marked by the very nature of those appearances. Not only do they appear bearing features of psychosomatic beingness comparable to those of all living beings, but by bringing out, as they advance onward, irmumerable other phenomena, objects of their own making-­useful objects, artistic objects for pure enjoyment, community ties, social networks of communicative practice and interaction-- they stand out among all other types of living beings. In addition, there is their transformation of the overall cast of their environment. They have a vitally significant impact upon other living beings by promoting or hindering their progress, by engendering or destroying the specific course of their lives, as well as by transforming them for their own benefit.

In short, human beingness appears as entering directly into the origination and course of the phenomena as such. These features of human beings penetrate the entire compass of our human universe so directly that we are not immediately aware either of them or of their implications-namely, that with the appearance of human being, the entire compass of the phenomena within which we exist abides in virtue of their unique processing within the human phenomenon. In the experience of itself as the movable, yet persistent point of reference for the appearance of the entire phenomenal horizon to itself, by processing all in the horizon constitutively and receptively at once, the human phenomenon manifests itself most poignantly by scrutinizing the existential conditions of phenomena and raising questions about them.

Human beings appear before us first and foremost in their mode of creating and shaping their existential circumstances and imbuing them with the aesthetic and moral significance that proceeds from their unique creative virtuality (in their life progress, the bearer of the human drama). Led by these aspects of their manifesta­tion, we now venture to approach the question of the human phenomenon itself.

In fact, there glimmers through these appearances the outstanding features of the human phenomenon. Not only does its nucleus of selfsameness, a nucleus of sense, seem to indicate not only a center of identity-of the self-regulation and self­enactment of a living agency-but, and first and foremost, its most revealing features of self-government is matched by a wide range of selectively prompted initiatives. Strikingly, the human selfsame nucleus fulgurates with ever new rays of creative-that is spontaneous and inventive-imaginative inspirations for novel undertakings.

Streaming from its center and running through all those rays innovating, reshaping, inspiring ever further aims and horizons, is the continual thread of the creative logos. Retrieving it from the flux of appearances, let us state some of the most representative features of the human phenomenon.

First of all, there is the crucial novum. From within the gradation of living types, imaginatio creatrix comes to the fore to animate the entire creative system of human beingness, inspiring the spectrum of specifically human life and its world [see note 5

INTRODUCTION XXXI

on 'creativity']. Second, comes its fruit, the creative human agency, which processes the workings of the human creative logos. Third, there is the mind, an offspring of the soul extending over the entire realm of the autonomous functioning of human beingness. The mind is intimately coordinated with the specific functions of the soul, the elemental and subliminal passions within the soul's creative forge, which processes virtuality (essential factors of human creative agency) in the three creative forms (aesthetic, intellective, and moral) and so imbues the spheres of the human significance of life with beauty, fairness, truthfulness, and goodness. Endowed with the logoic intellective function, the mind is by itself the great architect and builder of the entire edifice, shaping and surveying its progress.

Fourth, prompted by the spontaneity of imaginatio creatrix, but independently of it, there is the human soul, which, as mentioned before, while manifesting all of the appearances proper to living beings, releases a stream partaking of that in which she herself is grounded, her hidden tilan, which suffuses human beings with nostalgia, mysterious yearnings and awakens in human experience an unquenchable thirst to transcend the confmes of the world and life, to go beyond it all.

Obviously, this anthropological vision proceeding from the phenomenology of life, which takes as its starting point the human creative experience, stands over and against and in radical contrast to Husserl's focus on intention. It will yield fruits of its own for the dialogue into which we are entering.6

INTUITION, THE BEACON LIGHT OF THE LOGOS AND ITS MULTIPLE REGISTERS

The goddess ofParmenides' poem, who offered to reveal the ultimate truth of things and beings to him, distinguishing it sharply from common beliefs about it that take appearances for granted and from altogether false assumptions, did not at once arrest Parmenides' attention as some deus ex machina. Nor did she offer him "truth" ready on a silver platter. On the contrary, he tells of the long, strenuous journey made in search of her whereabouts and for her reveal herself to him.

We hear the same mention of a long journey from other sages-lovers of wisdom-such as Ikhwan al-Safii', Avicenna, ai-Ghazzall, Ibn 'Arab!, Saint Augustine, al-SuhrawardL . .. A few centuries later, in his treatise As far, Mulla Sadra told of how he had undertaken such a journey of the mind to arrive at wisdom or philosophical truth. Something similar is true in the case of every thinker. This may also be clearly seen in our times in Husserl's philosophy. His quest for the truth of things advanced along a long route and passed through several phases.

And meeting the goddess of Parmenides' "Fragment," that is, approaching the spring of intellective-experiential intuition at which the thirst for truth may be quenched, does not mean that one will quaff its pure waters all at once. On the contrary, it seems that it first takes great efforts to receive enlightenment regarding the direct road to be taken, regarding how we shall reach such or other modes of knowledge. From among the three roads that Parmenides' goddess distinguishes, only one leads to the disclosure of the absolute truth.

But, although she indicates the proper path and its anticipated aim, she does not tell of the many adventures and misadventures of the searching mind, of the false starts it may make, and how in selecting what steps to take, it may deviate from the

XXXII ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

right path. And, she does not mention that there may be several phases in the approach to the fmal destination. Even if the anticipated aim of the journey is given in a stroke of intuition that goes straight to its aim and directs the path of the quest, is this not something to be substantiated, clarified in the course of journeying? Does not this intuition reveal its truth in several modalities according to the orientation of the searcher? All this comes about in accord with the investigatory equipment that the travelers bring with themselves and within themselves.

The journey of the mind in orienting logoic progress after the disclosure of the constructive work of the logos of life, and beyond in the unveiling of its workings and its backing of the reality that bears its manifestation, calls for differentiation in the light of the rays of logoic intuition according to the very progress they bring with them in a scalar progression in conjectural powers. Collateral to each of the logoic constructive planes is an appropriate modality and force of the intuitive rays. The various levels of the logos, of the constructive logos of the phenomena, are uncovered in a progression that is, as it were, perpendicular to them; marking the phases of the itinerary, the progress "onward," so to speak, goes hand in hand with the horizontal discovery of the individualizing structures of living beings (their concatenations within an existential complex, etc.). The unveiling ofthe hidden and yet so powerful logos of life is the work of the intuition of the human mind, which concurrently leads the constructive logos to constitute appearances into the manifestation of the phenomenon and to appropriate them in an apperceptive, cognitive modality. This is possible in virtue not only of the vitally significant lights possessed by all living beings to varying degrees, but also of the creative powers that carry human beings to the peak of their proficiencies.

The creative intuitions here clearly correlate the unveiled and the unveiling, the constitutive and the apperceptive (cognitive). They divide roles as the two devices concurrent with the logos.

Let us recapitulate: 1) Having been revealed in what is meant to be unveiled, the anticipated unveils itself in the guises of its ways of unveiling; 2) Having already embarked upon the right road, the process of penetrating the veils of appearance cloaking what is truly real might involve several phases, each one marking the stages in the journey, each stage marking an advance, a drilling deeper below the surface of the phenomenal appearances to attain a level of proper adequation. But it is only with the last phase that we reach what is anticipated. Furthermore, each phase and the fruit it yields are gathered and inform the same itinerary pursued by the intrepid voyager.

One phase encroaching upon the other, only all of them authentically progressing together bring clarity to the overall project.

INTRODUCTION XXXIII

PART II

THE LOGOS OF THE PHENOMENON REVEALED AND ELUC!DA TED

No other philosopher in history better shows the progressive revelation of the logos of phenomena and the intrinsic continuity of its path than does Edmund Husser!. Furthermore, as is the case in the work undertaken by all great thinkers, Husser! left no definitive conclusion to his labors. It is reported that on his deathbed he sighed: "If I could live one more life, I would start it all over again." Pioneers customarily chart the route toward the anticipated destination and progressively bring the phenomenon out of its obscurity in accord with their own lights. Their followers take byways, tangled paths, or follow carefully the pioneer's footsteps, adding new discoveries of their own, furthering progress toward the anticipated aim. All contribute to illuminate the territory where the conditions of the foundational grounding lie.

a) Let us now succinctly review the progress of the Husserlian itinerary in terms of the three phases mentioned at the outset. Their unraveling corresponds to constructive stages in the hidden foundational groundwork of the phenomena and at the same time shows the types of intuitive rays which, operative at one level, carry questioning links/hooks reaching to the next level for the necessary completion of the foundational schema.

I shall be briefly showing, as I have done already in an article in the World Phenomenology Institute's encyclopedia Phenomenology World Wide, 7 how Husser! pursued an itinerary traced out in advance by the logos of life-the logos of the phenomena-and how each progressive phase of the unveiling was "clearly and distinctly" implied by the logoic work of the preceding one. By way of anticipation, however, Jet me state what has been intimated throughout this extensive inquiry concerning the establishing of a basis for our dialogue: 1) as we shall see, the phenomena of beingness, or of reality, reveal themselves in four appropriately phased stages of inquiry; and 2) each of the phases of this progressive inquiry that is prompted by the interrogative logos of life that inheres in the human mind and that is also intrinsically concordant with the logoic construction/constitution of reality, leaves unresolved questions that give necessary pointers to a next step of inquiry that is indispensable to the completion of the task of the preceding phase. Further pursuance of this task is thus prompted by a Jogoic impetus/force that proceeds from the necessary intertwining of the entire logoic project of reality. Hence, we may presume that the differentiation of the constitutive/constructive phases stems as much from the substructures of the real as from the intuitive lights of the inquiring mind concurrent with it in the Jogoic work.8

Briefly, in view of the intrinsic concatenations (not all of which are perceived}, the human mind, Jed by appearances of the elucidated logos of the phenomenon, comprises all its foundational spheres together.

It is along this line that we shall be following the route of the logoic foundations of reality to their culmination in the post-Husserlian phase of the ontopoietic, ultimate foundations of the phenomenon, which digs deeply enough to bring to light

XXXIV ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

far-reaching horizons of the real that have thus far remained in the shadows. This fourth, ontopoietic phase of the phenomenology of life will bring us to the completion of our querying.

b) The passage from level to level of the logos in phenomenology. We shall begin our perusal by looking at the first phase of Husser! 's quest. Each of the three phases ofHusserl's development is marked by the uncovering of a new level of sense in the constitution of reality, whose logos, accompanied by novel paths of creative imagination, yields clues for deciphering new sensory data in intelligible forms, concepts. This new level of thematization of the intelligible becomes a groundwork for investigation.

In the first phase of his inquiry, Husser! discovered "essences," which as inherently subjacent structures subtend the regularity of the fleeting appearances of phenomena and which through a direct presencing to the mind allow their distinctiveness and certainty to be apprehended by the eidetic type of intuition in which they reveal themselves. This is the level of the intuitive visibility of the structuration of the real, which though invisible to sensory perception, provides firm, indispensable support (foothold) for the apprehension of the recurrent stability of phenomena.

However, the very visibility of the structures to intuition itself raised the question of the status of the intuitive visibility of ideal structures, of the status of ideal structures with respect to their cognition. The visibility pointed to a need to complement the self-evidence of the structures with an investigation into the constitution of essences as objects of cognitive consciousness. So it is that we embark with Husser! upon the disclosing of the second intuitive plane upon which the nature of human consciousness in its highest intellective level of "pure consciousness"- in acts free of any admixtures of the changeable, empirical plane of fleeting appearances--constitutes its objects in terms of their unchangeable, phenomenal nature. This is the level of the transcendental disclosure of human "pure" consciousness.

At this point, we reach a climactic stage in the entire Husserlian pursuit. The nature of cognition by human consciousness of the various degrees of intelligibility of cognition in the human mind now comes to the forefront of attention and becomes the basis for all reference. Indeed, human consciousness is identified with a system of intentionality that carries on the process of the constitution of objects in consciousness inasmuch as it stands for the apprehension of the nature of these objects. Yet, in this phase of the uncovering of the nature of the intentional consciousness constituting the phenomenal reality, we do not come to the definitive foundation of that reality. As a matter of fact, to make a long story short, the constitution of objects does not reach the concrete real beings. For one thing, there is their interaction with their concrete, empirical substratum. Second, there are the interconnections that extend from each being toward other beings-phenomena, since they exist together concretely within the same domain of the world. Instead, constitutive objects float as abstract schemata within their intentional network. (See the pertinent study on this matter by Nader EI-Bizri in this volume).

Thus, we are pointed toward the next phase of inquiry, namely, that which focuses on the genesis of phenomena in the most concrete fashion within the

INTRODUCTION XXXV

common world of reality. This level of the foundational investigation is borne by intuitive rays greatly amplified and focused on the various spheres of the genetic visibility that constitutes the Iifeworld. And yet, even this stage of the foundational phenomenon of the lifeworld did not remain self-contained, clarified, and closed as regards our querying.

Having revealed how, in the guise of intentionality, the system of human consciousness encounters the intentional system of nature, that is how, apprehending the human sphere within a unified genetic system of nature, Husser! made an enormous contribution to our culture and sciences. However, the conception of the lifeworld, though following intention down to empirically-and no longer intellectively-conceived intentionalities and their intuitive rays did not yield ultimate philosophical answers. The conception of the lifeworld as a pristine stage of reality prior to any formative diversification turns out to be a philosophical fiction. How could we assess such a pristine, primal level with the intuitive rays of intentionality without forming it intentionally by that very assessment, without adding some constitutive import?

And yet, such a pristine level has to be found if we want to satisfy the goal of our pursuit. The intuitive level of the lifeworld in its genetic unfolding points to the first platform at which the generation of life simultaneously engenders the receptive/ constitutive logos of the mind. Engaging in independent philosophical query, I myself have proposed the fourth phase of phenomenology, which completes the entire project of the quest for the ultimate foundation of phenomena. This fourth phase is my phenomenology/ontopoiesis of life.

The above overview of the intuitive links connecting one stage of the phenomenon of reality to another implies crucial intuitive evidence.

When inquiring into the existential autonomy of real beings can we see abstract structures of essences or intentional constructive networks as being a satisfactory, ultimate factor of reality? Certainly, the essential logos subtends the constructive/ constitutive autonomy of the singular being, but, as I have already brought out, beyond appearances and presumptive phenomena there glimmers the dynamic network of generative streamlets of forces (organic, vital, creative, spiritual, sacral, cosmic ... ) for which the abstract structures of essences cannot account. Abstract structures of essences or intentional constructive networks may show structural possibilities of transformations, as well as possible directions for dynamic inter­change, but they remain aloof from the concrete flux of life and the play of its forces. And yet, as even a superficial glance at the presumptive phenomena of reality makes manifest, it is the great play of forces that makes possible the crystallization of a phenomenon regulating its fluid appearance. Seen as the essence of its phenomenon, the autonomy of real beings discussed above resides first and foremost within a nucleus of forces that are informed from its innermost core and are faithful in their display to the great lines of its logos.

The surges of glaring light are a factor of force, spontaneity, and dynamism borne by the interrogative logos as much as by the concordant constructive logos, a force for which the structurizing of genetic processes-neither eidetic, or intentional-cannot account. And yet they are carried forward by its driving force. Furthermore, in reaching down with the genetic intentional processes into the

XXXVI ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

simplest regions of becoming, their deployments raise the great question of their origin, an origin viewed as much as a certain initial spontaneity bringing about their procedural networks as as a seminal factor of transformatory formations and progress.

Obviously, eidetic and intentional rationalities fall short of accounting for the origination of their course, that is, for the origination of consciousness concurrent with its involvement with the real. They fall short of accounting for the primal force that manifests itself through their deployment, that surges sua sponte, engendering innumerable streamlets of motion, releasing seminal factors, and launching the entire network of beingness on its every differentiating evolutionary course. This is the logos of life, its first promoter and ceaseless engendering, orienting, and directing force, which alone can answer the inquisitive queries provoked by our pursuits.

Let us now complete the foregoing analyses concerning the unraveling of the logos of life. In anticipation of the lines of thought to be developed here, which sketch a provisional outline comparing the great vision of Mulla Sadra with that of the phenomenology of life, let us affirm that on this plane of the unveiling of the logos we find the pristine logos coming into play, the logos that appears simultaneously as spontaneity, force, and a reservoir of virtualities. The logos of life extends its relevancy toward its source, the Divine, one the one hand, and toward the immeasurable cosmos, on the other.

ALONG THE CREATIVE THREAD OF THE HUMAN LOGOS OF LIFE

The human, creative microcosm is revealed between the macrocosm and transcendence. Following the logoic pointers toward the ultimate stages of the foundations of reality and of the human condition we have, indeed, to operate a radical conversion within the concatenations of human beings whose queries, as much as their foundational status, are at stake here. Pursuing a path different from Husserl's, I came over time to bring out the crucially significant creative function of the human logos and to substitute it for the all-dominating intentional consciousness of Husserlian analysis. In emphasizing the all-constitutive/formative role of intentionality, Husser! overlooked the more fundamental essential vector/carrier of intentionality itself, which is life-the logos of life. It has been the task and role of my phenomenology of life to bring out the radically foundational role of the logos of life. And life reveals itself primordially in the creative human condition and through its phenomenal manifestation. Though by ceding primacy to creativity, intentionality necessarily assumes a secondary, however indispensable, role within the genesis of the human phenomenon and its expensive life spheres, it is nevertheless from creative nature that the human soul and mind draw ultimate, decisive access to the All. Hence, in this substitution of the creative function of the human being for the intentionality hitherto methodologically presupposed in phenomenology, there lies what may be called a "Copernican Revolution." It is in this radical perspective, novel in the history of philosophy, that the key to the Sezam of the creative logos is proffered, that we find clues for taking our ultimate step.

INTRODUCTION XXXVII

In his last research and reflections, Husser! himself was aware of the pointers to which his intuitive journey-in its third stage-had at last come. He attempted, as I pointed out in the Encyclopedia article mentioned above, to search for its links within the empirical spheres of life, precisely in the domains of science that in the earlier phases of his inquiry-prior to the phase that fixed on the transcendental lifeworld-had been "suspended" from phenomenological consideration on account of their inaccessibility to intellective "pure," intuitions.

However, in plunging into the constitution of the lifeworld, Husser! progressive­ly widened the ranges of what qualified as intentionality and modified his initial requirements to include kinesthetic-motility and then descended even to the level of the intentionalities of bodily movements, and even further down. But, intentionality as a life faculty, whether human or animal, does not carry the physical operations of the body and nature. Let us repeat that Husserl's conception of intentionality as the cognitive/constitutive thread of consciousness does not reach down to the primal existential level of the functioning of life, and consequently may not carry the thread of the unveiling of the phenomena in its ultimate stage, nor can its intuitions provide the clues necessary for conceptually thematizing what it yields. With this we encounter the limits of the conceiving the human being in terms of the constitutive/ cognitive intentionality.

As indicated above, we shall substitute for intentionality the creative function of the specifically human being.

ONTOPOIETIC SPHERE OF THE LOGOS OF LIFE

Taking the creative act of the human being as the starting point of our ultimate quest, we progressively discover the constructive spheres of the logos of life itself.9

We become surprised and overwhelmed by an entirely new vision of the beginning of the human world. We enter into our turmoil of becoming, of shifts in focus, of the streaming flux of existence. The creative act in fact brings us into the flux of forces flowing from and into the turmoil of universal becoming. This is not a matter of an architectonic of structuring devices, but of the constructive harnessing of the primal, vital, mental, intellective, spiritual streams of forces bursting forth. The constructive logos of life is itself, as hinted at above, a fulgurating force, an ever renewed impetus that simultaneously races and harnesses it the equipoise of a relatively stable form ofbeingness. 10

The creative intuitions focus on the unfurling of the modalities in which, entering into the play of universal forces with its constructive device of the self­individualizing project of beingness, the logos of life realizes that project in the concrete flux of becoming and brings in the ontopoietic sequence. From the latter proceed the generation, unfolding, and innermost directions for the life course of a beingness qua beingness, and for its existential concretion as well. The entelechial agency simultaneously embodies spontaneous force, seminal endowments, and directions for their unfolding is a principle of order of the universal turmoil of forces and the principle of becoming. It is the principle of beingness as such, a mediating originary factor of its "essence" and "existence" both. The self-individualizing of beingness, the way in which, the logos of life expands in its dynamic generative

XXXVIII ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

impetus, spreading myriad rationalities along the way, is the thread along which, seeking to bring wild dynamism and conflicting tendencies into some balance, human creative intuitions may follow the turbulent careers of living beings in their circumambient, changeable conditions, within their worlds caught in transformation.

Along with the creative act of the human being leading the way, we discover three generative matrixes of these spheres of rationalities of the logos, of life in becoming, each of which originates a specific sphere marking the evolutionary type of beingness: first, the "womb of life" is found processing the organic forces from prelife conditions in attunement with the available generative material and with relevance to terrestrial and cosmic forces; second, there is the matrix of the "sharing­in-life," which deploys the rationalities of the vital significance of living beings and their sharing-in-life through gregarious communicative skills; third, there is the matrix of the "creative forge," which nourished by the bursting forth of human creative virtuality and spontaneity in the incessant inflow and outflow of inter­generative forces processed by the human mind, brings the logos of life to its climatic completion. 11

With this, the ontopoietic "plan" of life's becoming offers the much sought after groundwork for all rationalities: organic, sentient, emotional, intellective, spiritual­a meeting place of all knowledge and cognition (scientific, artistic, spiritual), a true scientia universa/is in a project to be unfolded.

Belonging to this project vicariously (because not in the direct line of the con­tinuity of the logos of life, but prompted by its creative bursting forth, unfurling, and consequently leading to the transformation of living beingness reaching its creative peak) is the climatic development of the human soul.

Indeed, at a certain stage in the creative unfurling of the human person, turning progressively against the creative wonders, feeling unsatisfied with the significance of life, employing a progressive force of its very own, the soul of the human person releases hitherto hidden virtualities in a subtle quest to bring all this to an end. Thus enchanted with the logos of life, the soul seeks to understand its ultimate meaning and enters into a subterranean quest for the springs of its destiny. As we find the traces of this quest at the ontopoietic level, so also shall we find the clues for its extraordinary thematization.

Thus the ontopoietic sphere of the ultimate logoic foundation of reality opens up at both extremes: toward the cosmic forces and rationalities, at the one limit, and toward infinite sacral spheres at the other. Through their creative souls, the human being mediate these realms as a creative microcosm. 12

lNW ARD SACREDNESS, OR THE SACRAL-PHENOMENON-IN-PROGRESS

With the human soul's releasing of a stream of her own innermost spontaneities, there surges a novel type of becoming and a novel kind of phenomena. As a matter of fact, these spontaneities bring specific virtualities along with them, as well as imaginative powers contributing to the crystallization-in process that will unfold within the entire frame of the human being and having its center within the soul. Progressively evolving, step by step along its very own route, and escaping the thematizing (ciphering) of the mind, as well as its creative/intentional system of

INTRODUCTION XXXIX

conceptualization, it is the soul itself that from its hidden resources spins out a thread of progress in the transformation of the mental, creative schema of the life of the person.

The sacral phenomenon benefits from virtualities of its very own brought forth by the spontaneities of its quest. The progressive crystallization within the soul of its own transformative progress calls for novel modalities differing from those borne by the logos of life; in its simultaneous revelation to the soul of its transformative modalities and a ciphering of its experiences, the soul has novel resources in the sacral imagination. The latter interprets the new modalities of the complexes of sense for ciphering the inward sacred events of the soul, which now opens its sacral universe. The metamorphosis of the inward soul and its ciphered phenomenon are one. The soul surges in its spontaneously ciphering of the sacral, which is without appearances. They both grow toward the infinite.

I have written at length about the "three movements" of the soul as it advances in the unfolding of the sacral logos. In his or her inward sacral process, the entire human being is slowly being transformed.13 In accord with the inwardly surging ciphering pointers, a novel type of perception of an entirely novel universe of experience emerges within our inward perceptions: evidences of new phenomena, new values of life, new ideals-at odds with the current values of the creative logos of life. Then we are no longer oriented by life accomplishment ideals but, in contrast, by an unquenchable thirst to transcend them, to reach out toward the ultimate sense of life itself. The process occurring within the soul simultaneously reveals its hidden resources in the inward manifestation of this universe, the universe of sacral life.

Outwardly, the soul only shows itself in ways that are seemingly puzzling, because ungraspable by the creative intelligible molds of the mind, of meaning. But the soul permeates this meaning essentially as it is implemented in the person's interworldly manifestation.

Thus the inward manifestation of the sacral phenomenon is simultaneously its unveiling. The sacral phenomenon does not call for any further legitimation. Each evidence of it carries its own absolute necessity within itself. As we progressively unravel the stages of its unfolding within the human soul, we only deepen and expand its circumference and consequently our entire human beingness. The stages through which it advances in our metamorphosis lead us toward the infinite.

Thus, from its creative fulcrum, human beingness as the microcosm brings about the world of life-the world of life stretching outward through the earth to the cosmos. And prompted by its growth as created by the logos of life, it brings its own spontaneities forth from its innermost core to surpass the world of life and advances toward the last horizon, one that escapes any phenomenal grasp.

In the course of this brief investigation of the conditions required for a dialogue between Islamic philosophies and phenomenology, several points of convergence, as well as requirements, have been pointed out. In conclusion, it seems that the main condition for the unfolding of a fruitful dialogue, namely, that it establish ground upon which the requirements of the respective parties to the dialogue may be met, may be found in the fourth, post-Husserlian phase of phenomenology. Indeed, phenomenology/ontopoiesis of life opens a vast field between the two infinities

XL ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

upon which, when adequately acknowledged, its insights are legitimately established. Thus may the entire spectrum of human experience be brought into comparative discussion. Discovering the basic networks of the ordering logos, through its main principle of the ontopoiesis of life in the self-individualization of beingness, phenomenology/ ontopoiesis of life, on the one hand, establishes what Islamic thinkers caJI the "microcosm" as the center from which flows cosmic relevancy and, on the other hand, foiiowing the innermost caii of the human soul, launches a transcending quest for the sacral infinity. We may now outline a tentative groundwork for the proposed dialogue.

LAYING THE CORNERSTONES FOR THE METAPHYSICAL DIALOGUE

BETWEEN ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY AND OCCIDENTAL PHENOMENOLOGY

Agreeing with an intuition of Leibniz, I would say that each living being (monad) expresses, or mirrors, the entire universe-though, I would add, not in the alleged isolation of the Leibnizian monad. This mirroring not only crystaiiizes the Jaws of the universe and the phases of evolutionary progress in a unique way, but also because is fashioned in response to the forces of life at work in the span of each living being's existence from origination to extinction, with each living being unfurling its potentialities in attunement with aJI the other originating beings that form with it a common network. Therefore, to get a proper vision of any factor of living beings, as weJI as of anything else, we should envisage them within the context of this common network. In terms of our foregoing analysis of development of phenomenology in four stages, this common context within which the meaningfulness of each datum vicariously participates in that of others and in their significant concatenations would be the platform of the fourth stage, that is, of the phenomenology/ontopoiesis of life. Hence, we shall now attempt to outline briefly the parameters of this context.

a) Even a very sketchy outline will, for programmatic purposes, afford us a look at the essential insights that phenomenology/ontopoiesis of life shares with some Islamic thinkers, in particular with Mulla Sadra. These essential insights will serve to stake out common territory for a possible dialogue. Albeit expressed in somewhat different terms and arguments, there are at least three basic insights that we share.

In his dense treatise Le Livre des Penetrations Metaphysiques (Kitab al­masha 'ir), 14 Mulla Sadra outlines the entire schema of his metaphysics. Therein he focuses on his conception of the preeminence of existence as an ever fulgurating active, immaterial, but concrete, force that acts upon essence (quiddity) and accounts for the individualization of beingness by establishing it in concrete existence-this in the course of a series of rigorous, speculative arguments that he makes to defeat the views of Suhrawardi (in the latter's Shihaboddin Yahya) 15 concerning the priority of essence (quiddity) over existence, which views hitherto prevailed in Islamic philosophy. His metaphysics situates the ontologically crucial issue of the individualization and becoming of real beingness within the vast sphere of its origin, establishment (instauration) in being by and from the Creator-the supreme and originary existence-and the course of its progress toward the final destination, that is, the return to its source. In these arguments, emphasis is placed on the factor of

INTRODUCTION XLI

existence, which through its "intensities", modes, --in the absolute sense, "quo ad se," a scholastic expression for us--, shapes the transitional phases of becoming through which the "essence" of the real being reaches fulfillment before its return to the source. In its transitional steps and stages, the "existence" of abstract "quiddities" in which we apprehend them as "objects" takes shape "quo ad nos."

Above all, we have to focus on the microcosms here. Mulla Sadra brings forth a compelling vision here of the realm of the microcosm-the world of beings and things-as one of incessant movement, of flux, change, and motion.

In this, we find the first fundamental point at which Mull a Sadra 's metaphysics and ours coincide: the relentless flux of reality also captures the vision of the phenomenology of life.

Mulla Sadra affirms the temporality of the world and of everything in it. His extensive section on the eighth penetration is precisely about the temporal genesis of the universe. 16 He writes: "There is neither body, nor corporeal material reality, be it the soul or a body that should not be an innovating ipseity and the existence and individuality would not be impermanent." 17

We first have the temporal, constantly changing (changeable) nature of everything, body and soul, within the world and of the world itself. But, second, this changeability, is not arbitrary or haphazard flux. On the contrary, like the great thinkers of the past from Heraclitus on, Mu!Hi Sadra intuits reality as the flux of becoming-and meeting up with phenomenology of life here again-in the course of his seeking principles of order.

Indeed, in the paragraph cited, it is brought out that change and transformability are indicative of the underlying factors that undergo them while remaining the same, that is to say that the change and transformability are those of concrete beingness. "The body undergoes perpetual change, renewal, rupture, cessation, destruction. No stability as concerns nature." 18 Yet, there is "something" that undergoes the changes, destruction, and innovative transformations while remaining in its sameness. There is an "innovative ipseity" through which, in its specific mode, existence maintains individuality and the act of being (existence) of the individualizing nature. That means that a real beingness that consists in its act of existence is, nevertheless, borne not in itself, but in its mode of existence by means of its existential inward constitution. The latter maintains its identity or sameness in transit throughout the processes of change. It is its principle of order and becoming.

Indeed, order emerges in function of-and along the transformability of-the "innovative ipseity" of real beings. The innermost essence-ipseity-is itself grounded in the "substantial form" from which the directives of becoming flow. Adducing the incessant renewal of nature, Mulla Sadra states that there is no body whose essence would not be constituted of the substantial form, one that expands (propagee) in totality "dans !'ensemble de ses parties integrantes." 19 It is in virtue of the inward constitution that flux and dynamism are harnessed into becoming and order. They come from within, serving the work of existence. Within a vision that sees reality as remaining in an universal stir, flux is specifically seen as follows the ordering directives flowing from the fulgurating force of particular existence.

XLII ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

That constitution occurs inwardly according to the intensity of its modes stands out as the second grand intuition that phenomenology/ontopoiesis of life shares with the metaphysical vision of Mulla Sadra.

The majority of great thinkers throughout history, beginning with Aristotle, Leibniz, Hegel... have seen the deployment of life as proceeding from within living beingness, but they have differed in their conceptions of this inward ordering device. Mulla Sadra's conception of the "constitution" of the concrete beingness fixes on the act of existence's bringing into concretion the innermost nucleus of its "quiddity," which itself is grounded in what he calls "substantial form."2° Carried by the act of existence, it is this substantial form that lies at the source of the absolute autonomy of the essence, which is its own cause as well as its own telos. There is no "cause a devenir et a son renouvellement incessant, car ce qui est essentiel n'a point a etre cause par une autre cause que Ia cause meme de !'essence. Lorsque l'lnstaurateur a instaure Ia nature, c'est cette essence en perpetuel renouvellement qu'il instaura."21

Hence in his very words: "l'acte d'existence, l'acte d'exister de cette nature, consiste precisement dans cette existence s'accomplissant graduellement. La permanence de Ia nature c'est precisement son devenir: sa stabilite c'est son changement meme."22

In its grand vision of universal becoming carried on by the primeval force of the logos of life, phenomenology/ontopoiesis of life has a comparable vision of that becoming's ordering principle in the inward ontopoietic nucleus of seminal forces brought into play by the logos of life. The constructivity of becoming first refers to a nucleus of constructive forces, the "ontopoietic design," which unfolding from within and undergoing transformations, maintains the identity of beingness. 23 This inward dynamic source of individual becoming, the constructive ontopoietic design with its seminal cargo (endowment), seems to correspond to the modes of existence apprehended by Mulla Sadra's vision, while our "entelechial principle" corresponds to his "essence." To his grand motion of the flow of concrete existence carrying out the progress of being and becoming corresponds our conception of the logos of life carrying the ontopoietic constructive dynamism.

The telos toward which all natures tend in order to realize their essence "en raison de mouvement qui s'accomplit dans leur substance meme (leurs 'meta­morphoses ')"24 --which consists of radical transformation and destruction-- which te/os each essence carries with itself, corresponds to the deployment of the individualizing of the entelechial principle of the ontopoietic design in our terms.

With these two basic insights shared by both visions, we may now approach the third essential point at which these two visions coincide, which will bring us directly to the topic of my next essay, namely, the "metamorphosis of the soul."

From both the Aristotelian and the Islamic perspectives-and in mine as well­the term "soul" actually encompasses the entire living individual. Mulla Sadra sees the radical, inwardly designed destruction of living beings as a way that the order of things emigrates toward the "unique qui a Ia 'Puissance," that is, God.25 And surprisingly enough, you will see how in the phenomenology of life, the transformation on the path towards the divine-the "third metamorphosis of the soul"-occurs though the breaking down of the natural, worldly soul.

It is indeed fascinating to follow the ideas in Paragraph 14 of Mulla Sadra's Le Livre des Penetrations Metaphysiques in which the final telos of this deployment of

INTRODUCTION XLIII

essence is reached in the destruction of its earthly edifice: "que so it detruit le present edifice, que soit foudroye quiconque est sur terre et dans le ciel, que soit ruine le present sejour, et" 26 -the most significant step- "que l'ordre des choses emigre aupn!s '!'Unique qui a Ia puissance"'27

Thus, Phenomenology of life, which I shall subsequently present, also coincides with the metaphysics of Mu//ii Sadrii on the matter of a "radical metamorphosis. "

In fact, we fmd indications here as to how a central point, the human creative soul, the main features of which I have already presented in this introduction, acquires its full significance when seen in its fully established context, as the center of the microcosm situated between the cosmic forces and the infinity of the sacred.

There are points of similitude and divergence both in these philosophical visions, but we see a coincidence obtaining between our analysis of the origin and deployment of the "sacral soul" and of the "transnatural destiny of the soul" occurring in the course of the ontopoietic metamorphosis of the human being and Mullii Sadra's apprehension of the borderline transitional sphere of the thinking soul "inte//ecte et en acte" and its transnatural passage to the Divine Soul.

In conclusion, the two metaphysical visions under consideration ultimately meet in their common expansion toward the two infinities, that of the cosmos and that of the Divine.

These are just a few of the cornerstones intuitions of both visions of the microcosms that all living beings are, and they demand our careful analysis and comparison. They function as shared reference points as we stake out territory for further common investigations and more specifically as pointers comparative analysis and investigations of the soul and related matters in the pages that follow.

NOTES

1 Henry Corbin, The Concept of Comparative Philosophy, translated from the French by Peter Russell, Ipswich UK: Golgonooza Press, 1981, p. 5. 2 Ibid. 3 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Logos and Life, Book 4: Impetus and Equipoise in the Life Strategies of Reason (Analecta Husserliana LXX) Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000, pp. I 02-29. • Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, "The Passions of the Earth," in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Passions of the Earth in Human Existence, Creativity, and Literature (Analecta Husserliana Volume LXXI), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001). 5 In the phenomenology oflife, the terms 'creative,' 'creation,' 'creativity,' 'imaginatio creatrix' are used in a relative sense, i.e., only relative to human beings, to human imagination, invention, craftsmanship, artistry, and skills to be used upon already ex1sting material. In Islamic philosophy, as well as in the Judeo-Christian tradition, 'creativity' is primarily used in an absolute sense, in the sense of a "bringing into existence" --exclusively in relation to God, the Creator. 6 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Logos and Life, Book 1: Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason, Treatise (Analecta Husserliana Volume XXIV), Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988. 'Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, "Phenomenology as the Inspirational Force of our Times: Its Seminal Intuitions and Dynamic," in Phenomenology Wide: Foundations -- Expanding Dynamics -- Life Engagements, A Guide for Research and Study, An Encyclopredia of Learning (Analecta Husserlian LXXX), Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003. 8 Tymieniecka, "The Passions of the Earth." 9 See Tymieniecka, Logos and Life, Book 1: Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason, Treatise.

XLIV ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

10 See Tymieniecka, "Phenomenology as the Inspirational Force of our Times: Its Seminal Intuitions and Dynamic." 11 Tymieniecka, "The Passions of the Earth." 12 Tymieniecka, "Phenomenology as the Inspirational Force of our Times: Its Seminal Intuitions and Dynamic." 13 Ibid. " Molla Sadra Shirazi, Le Livre des Penetrations Metaphysiques {Kitab al-masha'ir), Collection Islam Spirituelle, Paris: Verdier, 1988. Unavailable to me in the original, this work will be quoted throughout from the masterly translation and commentary of Henry Corbin. Is This view has been wrongly attributed to Avicenna. Cf. Nader El-Bizri, "Avicenna and Essentialism," The Review of Metaphysics 216, June 2001. 16 Although my knowledge of Mullii Sadrii's writings is limited to this treatise only, consultation with Islamic experts and readings of general presentations of Mullii Sadrii's work in the secondary literature have confirmed my conviction (drawn from the very nature of Le Livre des Penetrations itself) that it presents a synthetic view of his general theory. I am referring here to the eighth "penetration," the section (part) of "troisieme voie, indication concernant !'action demiurgique et l'instauration creatrice" which is about "Ia genese temporelle de l'univers," p. 137, Corbin, pp. 155, 159. This extremely dense section, barely a few pages long, carries the same title as MuiUI Sadrii's earlier treatise entitled Sur Ia genese du monde dans le temps (Risala fi huduth al-'alam), which is over a hundred pages long, and we may presume that it is a summary of it. Unfortunately, it is not been translated into a language accessible to me. According to Corbin, Mulli'i Sadrii, following his theory of "intersubstantial movement" (haraka jawhariyya) in this last treatise, and making reference to the early Greek philosophers (Thales, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Pythagoras, etc.), in opposition to his master (Mir Damad), establishes the contingent existence of the world. Cf. Henry Corbin's introduction to the Livre des Penetrations. 17 Molla Sadra Shirazi, Le Livre des Penetrations Metaphysiques (Kitab a/-masha'ir, pp. 155-56. 18 Ibid., p. 156, fifth line from the bottom. 19 Ibid., the same paragraph. 20 Ibid., p. 157, second paragraph from the bottom. 21 Ibid., paragraph 38, p. 157, first from the top. 22 /bid., pp. 157, the same paragraph. 23 Tymieniecka, Logos and Life, Book IV: Impetus and Aequipoise in the Life-strategies of Reason. 24 Mulli'i Sadrii, Livre des Penetrations, paragraph 140, p. 157. 2s Ibid., p. 158. 26 Ibid., first paragraph from the top, p. !58. 27 Ibid.