Document Type : Original Article

Authors

• fateme soleimani ¹
• Fateme Soleimani Darrebaghi ²

¹ Assistant Professor, Imam Sadiq University

² Associate Professor, Imam Sadiq University

Abstract

Action passes through the route of human beings’ inner aspects such as their cognitive powers and their power to desire and will, and then reaches the stage of externalization. The main research question in this study is how to explain this process. It is therefore necessary to answer these two questions. 1. What are the factors in the formation of action, and what part they each play in its production; 2. How do these factors interplay? From the viewpoint of Sadra’s philosophy, there is a kind of order in the generation of the basic elements of action. The element of cognition is prior to all others. Next is desire which asserts itself as an outcome and achievement of the cognitive operation. Although at any moment there is the possibility of the presence of several desires that sometimes conflict with one another, with the emergence of will qua the intense and prevailing enthusiasm, the conflicts come to an end and the action is realized. One of the functions of practical reason i.e. deliberation on and justification of action plays a fundamental part in the intensity and prevailing of one of the desires and manifestation of will. In fact, will is an achievement of the mental operation of practical reason and an affirmation of its justifications. In general, in the realization of action, its basic elements reach a coherence and cohesion grounded in a causal relation, such that each of the elements play their causal role in the human’s volitional action.

Keywords

• human action
• practical reason
• volition
• desire
• will
• Mulla Sadra

Main Subjects

• Islamic philosophy