ABSTRACT
The notion of tashkÊk lies at the heart of the primitive ontological struggle to reconcile one’s phenomenal experience of multiplicity, of many existents, with the notion of unity, of One Being.2 The apparent conflict between unity and diversity is a major theme in Neoplatonism, especially in the work of Proclus [d. 485].3 In early Islamic Neoplatonism, KindÊ draws upon the discussion in Proclus’ Platonic Theology to animate his discourse on the relationship between the One and the many in On First Philosophy.4 The common Platonic and Neoplatonic solution to the problem is to pose a scalar hierarchy in reality, a vision of degrees in a singular reality. It is widely accepted, following Vlastos, that Plato regarded reality as graded since there were necessarily gradations within the Forms that constituted ‘reality as such’.5 Modulation thus represents a (Neo)platonic vein in Islamic philosophy and exemplifies the Neoplatonic paradigm that I propose for a study of the Sadrian method.
