Ayatollah Javadi Amoli on the Relationship between Contingency based on Poverty and Essential Contingency

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

• Mohammad Javad Zakavi
• Saeed Elahinasab

Master's student in Islamic Philosophy and Theology, Qom University and fourth level student of Qom Seminary

10.22067/epk.2025.90951.1391

Abstract

Contingency based on poverty (imkān faqrī) is one of the innovations of Ṣadr al-Muti'allihīn Shīrāzī regarding the concept of contingency which reveals its truth in a different way. Among the followers of Mullā Ṣadrā, Ayatollah Javadi Amoli believes that the theory of contingency based on poverty is in contradiction and conflict with essential contingency and basically eradicates quiddity and leaves no room for essential contingency. In contrast, some researchers, referring to Allama Tabataba'i, hold that contingency based on poverty is an extension and deepening of essential contingency and that the two are not incompatible. Accordingly, the purpose of this research is to answer this question: Does adherence to the notion of contingency based on poverty negate the idea of essential contingency? If so, how is this incompatibility explained? This research is a basic study that, using library sources and content analysis methods, first describes the essential contingency and then provides an explanation of Mullā Ṣadrā's contingency based on poverty. Then, citing the statements of Ayatollah Javadi Amoli, it explains and elaborates on his theory and critically examines the arguments of his opponents. Finally, this article, by confirming and emphasizing the correctness of Ayatollah Javadi Amoli's theory and pointing out some of its implications, concludes that the contingency based on poverty and essential contingency are not compatible; because by establishing contingency based on poverty, quiddity vanishes from the philosophical glossaries.

Keywords

• contingency based on poverty
• essential contingency
• Ayatollah Javadi Amoli's
• relation

Main Subjects

• Islamic Philosophy and Kalam

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