Presential Knowledge and the Justification Gap: A Third-Way Epistemology from Mullā Ṣadrā's Transcendent Philosophy

Document Type : Original Article

Author
Hassan Husseini
10.22034/mi.2026.11103
Abstract
The divide between internalism and externalism constitutes one of the central impasses in contemporary epistemology concerning epistemic justification. Internalists ground justification in reflective accessibility but fail to secure a reliable connection between belief and objective reality. Externalists, by contrast, establish this connection through reliable cognitive processes, yet deprive epistemic subjects of direct access to their justificatory grounds. This article argues that the theory of presential knowledge (ʿilm ḥuḍūrī) developed by Mullā Ṣadrā al‑Shīrāzī (1571–1640 CE) within his Transcendent Philosophy (al-Ḥikma al-Mutaʿāliya) offers a genuine third alternative capable of satisfying both requirements simultaneously. Unlike contemporary theories that treat knowledge as a mental state, presential knowledge is understood as an immediate existential relation in which the knower is directly present to the known without conceptual mediation or representational imagery. Grounded in the principles of the primacy of existence (aṣālat al-wujūd) and substantial motion (al-ḥaraka al-jawhariyya), this mode of knowledge provides a non-derivative justificatory foundation that secures both existential accessibility and a constitutive relation to truth without collapsing into either standard internalism or reliabilist externalism. Through a systematic analysis of primary sources such as al-Asfār al-Arbaʿa and al-Shawāhid al-Rubūbiyya, alongside a critical engagement with the epistemological theories of Alvin Goldman, Laurence Bonjor, and Ernest Sosa, and employing an analytical-comparative methodology, this study reconstructs and evaluates Ṣadrā’s arguments in relation to contemporary justificatory frameworks. The article demonstrates that presential knowledge transcends the internalism–externalism dichotomy by dissolving the epistemic gap at its very foundation: the soul’s presence to reality is not a secondary relation but an expression of existence itself. The paper further outlines how fallible, acquired propositional knowledge is epistemically grounded in these presential foundations.
Keywords
Presential Knowledge
Mullā Ṣadrā
Internalism
Externalism
Epistemic Justification
Transcendent Philosophy
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Metaphysical Research
Volume 7, English Special Issue
June 2026
Pages 153-180