Existentialism or Essentialism as Approached by MullaSadra and Hakim Rajabali

Abstract

The problem of existentialism is one of the significant disputes of Islamic philosophy in the past few centuries. Based on the common consensus, existence is original. This paper embarks on answering the question that “To what extent can the common consensus be deemed as authentic?” To do so, a historical-analytic method is adopted to review the approaches of two major scholars of existentialism and essentialism, namely MullaSadra and Hakim Rajaballi, as well as historical background of this dispute. The findings suggest that although the common consensus dictates that MullaSadra’s existential approach is correct and Hakim Rajaballi’s essentialism is improper and inadmissible but existentialism and essentialism are two different interpretations of statements of previous scholars, especially Farabi and Avicenna. Therefore, theorists’ disagreements on existentialism and essentialism have principal and literal bases.