This illuminating study by Christian Jambet explores the essential elements of the philosophical system of Mulla Sadra Shirazi, an Iranian Shi’ite of the seventeenth century. The writings of Mulla Sadra Shirazi (d. 1640) bear witness to the divine revelation in every act of being, from the most humble to the most celebrated. More generally, Islamic philosophy employs ontology of the real that is important to the destiny of metaphysics, an ontology that belongs to our own universe of thought. The Act of Being nourished by the Sufism of Ibn al-‘Arabi, the philosophy of classical Islam, the thought inherited from the Greeks, and the esoteric and mystical dimension of Shi’ism, seeks to make sense of this intuition of the real.

Mulla Sadra saw the world as moving ceaselessly in an uninterrupted revolution of its substances, in which infinite existence breaks through the successive boundaries of the sensible and the intelligible, the mineral and the angelic. In a flourish of epiphanies, in the multiplied mirror of bodies and souls, Mulla Sadra perceived absolute divine liberty. Revealing freedom in the metamorphosis of the believer and the sage, existence teaches the imitation of the divine that can be seen “in its most beautiful form.” Reading Mulla Sadra reveals the nexus of politics, morality, liberty, and order in his universe of thought–a universe, as Christian Jambet shows, that is indispensable to our understanding of Islamic thought and spirituality.

In The Portal of the Mystery of Hope Peguy offers a poem with a profound, moving and comprehensive theology, as incarnated in his celebrated image of the ‘little girl Hope.’ This volume also contains a biographical chronology, a bibliography, and a host of notes that situate the poem in the context of Peguy’s life.

This book may not turn you into a great philosopher in thirty days, but it will show you how to begin to think philosophically. Dominique Janicaud reveals that philosophy doesn’t have to be intimidating. It can even be fun. He invites the reader to consider some of the big questions of philosophy and develop the critical, inquiring attitude which characterizes good philosophy. With a chapter a day, this is philosophy at its most accessible.

Each short chapter tackles a single question such as – What is a human being? What does free will mean? Is philosophy simply a matter of reading the famous works of the past? What are good and evil? Along the way, we are introduced to some of the greatest thinkers of the past, from Plato to Nietzsche.