There are three questions which have long been disputed over:
1. If man is a complex of soul and body, how was their relations in the beginning of the creation of man?
2. Is the soul - body relation unilateral or bilateral?
3. How is the soul - body relation after death?
To answer the first question, There are four theories as follows:
(i) plato's view of the separation of soul and body. This view is unable to justify the firm human character and soul-body relation.
(ii) Aristotle's view of the soul as an ideaor form of the body. Aristotle's is ambiguous.
(iii) Sheykh al-Ishraq's view of longing relation. He believes that the soul is made up when the body is formed. There is an animal soul between the rational soul and body. This view is also ambiguous.
(iv) Mulla Sadra's view of soul - body unity relation. He believes that soul is made up along side the evolutionary relation of material, the substential motion. Based upon Islamic sources, body takes in soul in one of its evolutionary stages.
Concerning the second question, religious theosophers believe in the bilateral relation. And, as for the third one, Muslim philosophers regard soul as eternal basing their arguments on the Divine Lows.
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