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Ibn Sīnā inherited two main philosophical views about the ontolo¬gical status of the Human soul namely: the Platonic view that human soul exists before the existence of the human body as a kind of imma¬terial spirit and the Aristotelian view according to which the human soul is nothing but the physical form of the body and lacks any kind of existence before the body exists. Ibn Sīnā rejected both views and endorsed the theory of human soul’s «spiritual coming-into-being» (al-hudūth al-rawhani). According to this theory, the human soul, though never precedes its body in existence, is essentially an incor-poreal (spiritual) substance which is bestowed to the body by the Su-perior Principles (intellects) just after the body gains an appropriate balanced temperament. Some centuries later, Mullā Ṣadrā criticized Ibn Sīnā’s view and proposed the alternative theory of human soul’s «corporeal coming-into-being» (al-hudūth al-jismāni). According to this theory, human soul in its first stage of existence is still a corpo¬real form of the body but it progressively, and during a continuous trans-substantial motion (al-harakah al-jawhariyyah), reaches the state of being completely spiritual. Therefore, the human soul is both a corporeal substance (in its early stages of being) and a spiritual entity (in its more complete stages of being). Some of Ṣadrā’s innovative metaphysical principles such as the hierarchy of existence and the trans-substantial motion help him well to defend the intelligibility of his theory.
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