Abstract

K nowledge of existence is one of the significant issues in the domain of philosophy and mysticism, so that it is the pivot of these two disciplines. Both philosophers and mystics maintain that the subject of their discipline is ‘absolute existence’. This equivocation has caused some mistakes in the domain of mysticism and philosophy, especially the mistake of those who advocate Mulla Sadra’s philosophy; because when discussing the fundamentality of existence and its related issues, the Gnostics’ and the philosophers’ opinions are summoned by those advocates in favor of their own viewpoints, whereas there is no common characteristic between Sadraic ontology and Gnostic ontology. The reason is that within the realm of possible existence is Mulla Sadra’s principality of existence, which means the objective reality is the unmediated instance of the concept of existence, rather than the whatish concept, though as the philosophers have said: ‘Every contingent thing is composite duality, composed of quiddity and existence. However, what is in the Gnostics’ words meant by ‘absolute existence’ is Necessity Existence or God’s Existence. In this essay, the author attempts to make clear the differences of these two perspectives.