چکیده:
Illumination metaphysicians argue that intensity and weakness، perfection and imperfection، increase and decrease observed in some individual cases of quiddity necessitate the “analogical gradation” of quiddity. Their view more concerns the individual cases of accidents like quality and quantity than those of the essence itself. The peripatetic metaphysicians، however، have come to totally deny the “analogical gradation” of quiddity whether accidents or essence. They have given their proofs referring the “analogical gradation” to what is white or black، for example، rather than the very whiteness or blackness. Having realized that the concepts as such cannot be exposed to the “analogical gradation”، they have referred the difference of intensity or weakness، perfection or imperfection of external things to their individual characteristics.
خلاصه ماشینی:
Subsequently, the Peripatetic philosophers realized that essence, insofar as it applies to its instances, does not possess any gradated difference, and they concluded that gradation does not apply to concepts that indicate the essential characteristics of individuals; rather, gradation only occurs in accidents and concepts that signify the aspect of accidental relation to substance (Sadr al-Muta'allihin, 1419: 1, 427, Allameh Tabataba'i's gloss).
Formulation of the Point of Contention The fact that the gradation contested by the Peripatetic and Illuminationist sages is not gradation in essence itself, insofar as it is essence and nothing else (qua essence / bima hiya hi), is due to the fact that gradation in essence itself or the concept is clearly absurd; because the meaning of gradation in essence itself would be that a single essence, insofar as it is essence—that is, qua essence and regardless of its instance and external individuals—with possessing intensity and weakness, or perfection and deficiency, would acquire essential multiplicity, such that the resulting essences—for example, essence A and essence B—when considered qua essence, while they possess unity with each other and are predicated of one another through essential primary predication, would possess a kind of distinction and essential multiplicity due to their perfection and deficiency or intensity and weakness, and be contrary to each other; consequently, the statement "essence A qua essence is not essence B qua essence, in other words: these two essences are negated from one another, even by the negation of primary predication" would be true.
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