assistant professor in Research Center of Islamic Sciences and Culture
Abstract
Purgatorial perfection is an important problem in kalam, philosophy and mysticism which drew scholars' attention from the outset. On the basis of revealed sources perfection in hereafter is a possible and undeniable event but from philosophical position it does not make sense since perfection is a sort of motion and it is nothing but gradual change from potentiality to actuality, which involves matter as substratum for potency and disposition. After death man enters purgatorial world in which there is no matter and hence no potency and change and thus no perfection. In justifying the event scholars in the domain of rational sciences focus on the nature of soul which, though in coming into being is in need and makes use of corporeal body as a means for its perfection, can survive the body and continue to grow spiritually without any form of matter as it can take place even in this world in dream in which spirit receives effusions without body. It is worth noting that other-worldly and purgatorial perfection is different from worldly one, the former being intellectual and latter practical.
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