The problem of evil in the philosophy of Molla Sadrâ

The problem of evil, whose past is as old as the history of humanity, has been the subject of discussion in the Islamic world as well as in the West. Philosophers living in different geographies and periods gave various answers to this problem with an eclectic study. Molla Sadrâ, like the philosophers before him, defined all kinds of evil that can be conceived on the basis of the non-existence of evil on the basis of the theodicy he put forward as either the absence in the substance or the absence of a perfection belonging to the substance. Sadrâ, who gave the name of "correlated evil" to the existence that caused these absences, determined the source of evil as the nature of physical beings. In this context, he tried to prove that evils were not created, on the contrary, they emerged necessarily due to the creation of physical beings, and therefore there was no contradiction with divine justice. The theodicy methods that Sadrâ dealt with in this field; Emphasizing that the absence of evils, their accidental occurrence, the inadequacy of the essence, and the fact that matter is not created due to less evils, will cause greater evils, he stated that some evils are not actually bad and arise from human ignorance or particular views. Finally, our philosopher faced a big problem under the name of cognitive evils in the face of the definition he determined. Because Sadrâ argues that no existence can be bad because he accepts all beings as inherent goodness. However, the fact that cognitive evils such as pain, trouble, sorrow, and grief in the human body are considered as bad although they are from the asset class, brought the philosopher's argument in the field of the absence of evil faced with a serious problem. In response to this, Sadrâ; Pain is the perception of absences in the body, and since this understanding is the "non-existence faculty", it has some existence. He replied in the form. In the same direction, referring to the unity of the soul and body, he argued that the soul comprehends all the activities in the body, as well as the absence and depletion, and that the pains arise as a result of that realizatîon. Keywords: Evil, Mullah Sadrâ, Theodicy, Wisdom Mutaaliy