Abstract

The present paper consists of three parts. The first part deals with the oneness-plurality relation and provides an answer to the question of what Mulla Sadra's idea concerning the subject and abode of oneness and plurality is, and how it differs from those of early philosophers. Apparently, he is the only person who has specified one thing as their abode, i.e. the very reality of being. In the view of the Transcendent Philosophy, the reality of being, whether in the outside or in the mind, enjoys oneness while being plural, and plurality while being one. Peripatetic philosophers believe that the abode of plurality is matter and quiddity. In order to justify plurality, Ishraqi philosophers, too, have to resort to darkness and dark configurations.The second part discusses the realization of plurality in disconnected images and tries to provide an answer to the difficult question of how it is possible for the plurality of individuals to come into existence without the presence of matter, and how all these material individuals could enjoy ideal forms. The answer is that, based on the precedence of being to quiddity and the gradational oneness of being, plurality is established through existence and the agent, rather than through quiddity and recipient. This is because a quiddity that causes the plurality of individual at a specific level is one that originates in existence and is merely the manifestation of existence and the sign of its plurality rather than its source.The third part deals with two types of plurality: the plurality of the connected imagination of each individual and plurality in the world of connected images, which is a collection of those connected imaginations. It also concludes that the plurality of each individual's connected imagination is due to both the plurality of their worldly bodies and the plurality of the forms existing in each connected imagination; those forms the origin of which is sometimes the world above and the world of intellects, sometimes the lower world and the world of matter, sometimes the forms existing in the disconnected imagination, and sometimes the creativity of the faculty of imagination. Whenever any of the connected imaginations enjoys plurality, it will also be created in the world of connected imagination. The subject and abode of oneness and plurality in connected imagination is one thing, i.e. the existence of the soul at the imaginal level; a level that Mulla Sadra considers to be disengaged. The demonstration of this disengagement demonstrates the realization of the plurality of particular souls after death. In this way, a world formed by the collection of intermediate state bodies before or after death, i.e. the world of connected imagination, is a world enjoying plurality of individuals. In this way, through demonstrating this type of the disengagement of the soul and this kind of individual plurality, the problem of Peripatetic and Ishraqi philosophers regarding the demonstration of the survival of intermediary souls after death is solved.