Historical Significance of Mullā Ṣadrā’s Ontological Approach To Classifying Virtues and Vices: A Analogy of the Faculties of the Soul

The present study aimed to thoroughly investigates Mullā Ṣadrā’s ontological approach to the classification of virtues and vices. To this end, the historical origins and development of these classifications were examined to detect the historical significance and contributions  of Mullā Ṣadrā’s perspectives. Following the Platonic-Aristotelian paradigm, Islamic philosophers have frequently analyzed virtues and vices analogous to the faculties of the soul. Accordingly, Mullā Ṣadrā’s  classification of virtues was analyzed in correspondence with an ontological approach to analyzing the faculties of the soul. In his work, Mullā Ṣadrā’ adopted three distinct approaches to the classification of virtues and vices: (1) Binary Model, with a focus on the virtues of ḥikmah (intellectual virtue) and ḥurriyyah (practical virtue); (2) Fourfold Model adressing the four human faculties—bestial, predatory, satanic, and angelic; and (3) Platonic-Aristotelian Model, with virtues and vices being classified as intellectual, appetitive, and irascible faculties of the soul, allowing for a systematic tabulation of virtues and vices. Mullā Ṣadrā’s analysis of the faculties of the soul draws on Avicenna’s Al-Shifāʾ and Al-Ishārāt as well as Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s Al-Mabāḥith al-Mashriqiyyah; however, his approach to this classification bears a stronger resemblance to the ethical framework of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. In this regard, as inferre by mystics and spiritual elites, Ṣadrā’s analysis of the faculties of the soul does not functionally align with the tabulated classification of virtues and vices. His classification, to a broader extent, corresponds to the approach of Muslim thinkers such as Ṭūsī; however, it is distinct—despite certain connections—from Aristotle’s classification of virtues.