Theory of Action by Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi

In the third century AD, the philosophy of Plotinus (205 AD – 270 AD) emerged, and thus ancient philosophy reached its peak, because it was able to blend in a beautiful composition the philosophy inherited from various Greek schools, including Platonic and Peripatetic, as well as Stoicism and Epicureanism, with all the intellectual and religious heritage of the ancient world of Persian and Indian origins and other previous civilizations. When it was Islam’s turn, starting in the seventh century AD, to lead the world intellectually, it had to start from the works that Plotinus began and continued at the hands of the Neoplatonic philosophers, which were crowned by Proclus (412 AD – 485 AD) in a rational, philosophical, but also theological, system with a well-structured structure. Thus, since the first philosopher in Islam, Abu Ishaq al-Kindi, who lived in the third century AH / ninth century AD, Muslim philosophers had to deal with this fertile philosophical composition, which is considered a mixture of different philosophical ideas, opinions and systems. Although the philosophies of the first two philosophers, al-Kindi and al-Farabi, were similar in terms of the cognitive foundations on which their philosophy was built, the work that al-Farabi did in spreading Aristotelian logic in Islam – for which he deserved to be given the title of the second teacher after Aristotle – made Islamic philosophy take a new direction with the philosophy of Sheikh al-Rais Ibn Sina, who, although he was very familiar with Aristotle’s philosophy, charted a new path for himself based on Sufi enlightenment or Eastern wisdom, as Sheikh al-Rais called it. Based on the work of the Sheikh Al-Rais, Muslim philosophers were divided into two categories: the category that found its goal in Aristotle’s logic, natural science, and metaphysics, which is the category of Aristotelian philosophers who considered that reaching the truth in philosophy is achieved by following the line whose first features were drawn by Aristotle, which is the philosophy that grew and flourished in the Islamic West through the philosophers of this region, especially Ibn Bajjah and Ibn Rushd. The second category drew from the philosophy of the Sheikh Al-Rais Ibn Sina and presented us with generations of philosophers, especially in Persia. This is the philosophical trend that continues to this day, especially in Iran. Naturally, among the most important philosophers belonging to this trend, we find the great philosopher Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi, to whom the researcher, Professor Abdelmalek Benathou, devoted this book.