The problem of knowledge is fundamentally significant in philosophy and has been a central concern in the Islamic philosophical tradition. In Transcendent Philosophy (al-Ḥikma al-Mutaʿāliyya), it arises from the human’s direct engagement with surrounding material realities and, through perceptual faculties and the soul’s emanative subsistence (qiyām ṣudūrī), is transformed into cognitive forms. These forms, progressing through abstraction and substantial motion, advance from material to imaginal, estimative, and ultimately intellectual levels.
This study examines a subtle incoherence in Sadrian theory regarding the formation of sensory perceptions. Ṣadrā attributes a dual role to the soul: as a source (maṣdariyya), whose relation to external sensibles is essential for the emergence of sensory forms, and as a manifestation (maẓhariyya), wherein the Active Intellect plays a crucial role, articulated through the theory of ibṣār. The interplay of these roles indicates that sensory perception unfolds through two interconnected processes.
Adopting a descriptive–analytical approach, this research highlights Ṣadrā’s expansion of ibṣār, showing how the soul’s dual functions contribute to the structured emergence of sensory perception and its cognitive actualization, thereby clarifying the dynamics of human perceptual experience in the Sadrian framework