Motion Denied

What is it about?

This article explores a topic in Islamic philosophy about whether the very essence—or substance—of things can undergo continuous change or “motion.” Most philosophers in the Avicennan tradition (following Ibn Sīnā, known in the West as Avicenna) argued that motion only happens in features like size, color, or place and not in the underlying substance that makes a thing what it is. But the 17th-century thinker Mullā Ṣadrā broke from this view. He claimed that all material things are in constant, deep transformation—even in their very being—a theory known as “substantial motion” (al-ḥaraka al-jawhariyya). The article focuses on ʿAbd al-Razzāq Lāhījī, a student and son-in-law of Mullā Ṣadrā, who nevertheless rejected his teacher’s idea. Lāhījī sided instead with Avicenna and presented a detailed refutation of substantial motion in his massive philosophical work Shawāriq al-ilhām.

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Why is it important?

This study is important because it throws light on a neglected but crucial moment in the history of Islamic philosophy i.e., when a major student of Mullā Ṣadrā, instead of following his teacher’s groundbreaking doctrine, defended the older Avicennan framework with fresh rigor and precision. By reconstructing Lāhījī’s argument in detail for the first time, the article shows that post-Sadrian thought was not simply a repetition of Ṣadrā’s ideas, but a living, internal debate about the nature of change, existence, and knowledge. Its timeliness lies in how it invites today’s scholars to rethink the boundaries of the Avicennan and Sadrian traditions, and to appreciate the diversity within later Islamic thought. More broadly, by clarifying what it means for something to change—or not—to “move” in its very being, the work also speaks to contemporary metaphysical questions about identity, continuity, persistence, and transformation, thereby bridging classical Islamic philosophy with modern philosophical concerns.