Mullā Ṣadrā’s Political Legacy: Ṣadrā’s Theory of Justice and the Religio-Political Authority in Post-Revolutionary Iran

Abstract

Apart from its philosophical attractions, the religio-political potentials in the transcendent philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī (d. 1050/1641) have helped to its dominance in the seminary and university in contemporary Iran. It seems that one of the reasons for the state’s support for al-Ḥikmah al-mutaʿāliyah in Iran after the Islamic revolution is the potentials existing in this philosophy to justify the establishment of a religious government based on the discourse of Shīʿī political authority, conspicuously the doctrine of walāyat-i faqīh (the guardianship and governance of the jurist). This article aims to demonstrate how Mullā Ṣadrā’s theory of moral and social justice could have provided an intellectual ground for the establishment of an Islamic state in the Shīʿī sense.