Comparison Between Film and Traditional Arts; A Philosophical Critic on Traditionalism According to Hikmat-Motaalieh

The paper, initially, explains the traditionalists view, illustrating their reason, on importance of traditional arts in Islamic history and civilization. The author compares traditionalist and modern consideration of beauty, and explains the symbolism strategy, which is based on matching of perceptible forms and eternal truths (in platonic heaven). The sacred art forms, then, should be in accordance with non-physical truths beyond the space and matter. This paper describes how any individuation of characters and events is not legitimate in traditionalist view. It refers to traditionalist leaders who deprecate temporal and local elements in art; according to which cinema and novel are evaluated as mediums without required capacity to be sacred. The author, then, illustrates the ontology of universal truths according to Islamic philosophy, and their relation with particulars. To do so, he begins by delineating two key doctrines of Hikmat-Mutaa'lieh ontology: the world of universals or Platonic Ideas (‘ālam al-muthul) and the discontinuous imaginal world (‘ālam al-mithāl al-munfaṣil). In Mulla-Sadra’s view, as the paper describes, there is a universal in the world of intellectual forms for each natural kind; a universal truth from which all instances of the kind come into existence and which is present in all of these particulars. Intellectual forms are self-subsistent, function, as spirits for specific forms, and the perceptible forms are their embodiments; that is, their shadows. For the intellectual forms are fine-grained, and these embodiments are coarse-grained. The world of intellectual truths is the lowest stage of abstract worlds, and is (in lower causal stages) the gateway to the physical world, so to speak. The discontinuous imaginal world is, nevertheless, a physical world (with shapes, dimensions, and temporality), though it is different from material corporeality, spatiality, and temporality, intermediated between non-physical and material world. Imaginal forms are manifestations or loci of the revelation of intelligible forms; that is, whatever exists in the world of Muthuls has a weaker degree of existence in the Mithal world. The author, after providing an account of the nature of these two worlds, considers some of their functions for, and effects on, creativity and symbolism in art. Since there is an important step in downward creation/causation from Mutul intellectual ideas to Mithal perceptible forms, and art, in many cases, deals with bringing meanings down to forms, and meanings are considered as abstract and immaterial, and physical forms are closely tied to sensory objectivity. The author, finally, concentrates on universals manner of existence in Muthul world according to Sadra’s philosophy, which includes immaterial unity and flowing existence among its particulars, at the same time. Thus, temporal and local perceptible forms not only can refer to their relative non-physical universals, but also include the presence of these universals. Therefore, as the author explains, it is not necessary to have a direct reference to absolute existence of universal truths in term of unindividuated forms. The paper concludes that cinema has a remarkable capacity to represent immaterial truths in case of their relevant particulars, and, contrary to traditionalists, to be one of the sacred arts.