Hitit İlahiyat Dergisi

The main purpose of this article is to put forward an alternative approach that tries to express the possibility of knowing Allah and the limits of talking about him. In the history of thought, there are many ideas expressed about God that point to different elements. The difficulty in expressing issues related to the metaphysical dimension within the boundaries of language has caused these approaches to be largely incomplete. However, it seems essential to consider all alternatives in comprehension and expression activities. Thus, the deficiencies encountered in any statement can be partially corrected by the means of another. As some contemporary thinkers have noted, the Islamic tradition of thought, with its rich experience, has the potential to make serious contributions to meaning in the modern era, when it can go beyond simply repeating phrases and its inspirational aspects are brought to the fore. However, it should be noted that there is no guarantee that every problem will be solved, especially in such a matter. In this context, at the first stage of the study, the views of Mullah Sadra, who has an important place in Islamic thought schools and who is accepted as one of the representatives of the tradition of knowledge, were focused on and the framework of his ontological approaches were tried to be determined. The rationale for such a justification is to emphasize the deep relationship between ontology and epistemology and to determine the sensitivity and skill of Sadra on this issue. The ultimate truth that Sadra, who accepts existence and positions his entire system on this thought, reached at the end of this process, is the statement that the use of an apophatic language about Allah is mandatory. At this point, it was tried to show that although he was seriously influenced by the thinkers who used such a language in the previous periods, he was a remarkable thinker with his unique aspects. It has great importance that he is located at the intersection of the topics discussed especially by philosophy, theology and Sufism, and his effort to build a harmonious structure. Therefore, the first title of the work includes the foundations and framework of Sadra's apophatic language. Particularly, his criticisms of the comprehensive articulation of the problems caused by the simile language and the effect of excessive exaggeration in the representational language on moving away from reflecting the truth seem noteworthy. Then, the cognitive process that people go through from their entry into the realm of being to their return to the real being is examined. Thus, the connection between Sadra's understanding of existence and understanding of knowledge was tried to be put forward more clearly, in other words his discourses on the hierarchical structuring in existence and human dimension are emphasized. It is possible to understand this hierarchy as a tightly linked chain that reflects divine wisdom. Although Sadra argues that apophatic language is finite, he is aware that one cannot remain completely silent about Allah. For this reason, in the third stage of the study, the opinions of Sadra about the bases such as text (nass), wisdom, science and unveiling (muqâshafah) on which people can utilize while talking about Allah are discussed. In this respect, his thoughts can be seen as an important alternative for approaches that both completely ignore the hierarchy of existence and deny the special position of the human being in the world, and ignore the ties that facilitate a better understanding of the relationship between beings. In the last part, how the representative language that people necessarily use can be used is examined in the context of the approaches expressed by Sadra. In this way, in the last two stages, it was attempted to show how the existence and knowledge focused on the first two stages affect the boundaries of discourse. Throughout the study, the works of Sadra, especially Esfar, were taken as a central reference and in order to make more in-depth analysis of some subjects, it was tried to benefit from the sources that have increased in number and published in Turkish in recent years.