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Abstract

Acquaintance of any man with his "I" and its perception has constantly occupied man's mind, for its correct, accurate answer causes meaningfulness of reality of the life and man's life. In Mulla Sadra's opinion. the reality of man, which is his very rational soul, is unknowable due to some reason and thus what philosophers have declared is not his reality although it expounds some characteristics of man. Mulla Sadra explains ways of achievement of that knowledge. Furthermore, he presents two kinds of essential definitions in first of which, although like previous philosophers using "rational animal", he bases his process of definition upon discussion of potentiality and actuality as well as of substantial motion and thus separates from his predecessors and in the
second of which, following mystics and whom he calls "those firmly grounded in knowledge", he founds man's natural definition upon principles of unity of the reality of existence and gradation of its levels as well as comprehensiveness of man in relation to all existential worlds and rcalms. Having taken Quranic, traditional foundations of Mulla Sadra's anthropology into consideration, the present essay deals with the said subject.

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