The Interdisciplinary Quarterly of

This study employs Lakoff and Johnson's theory of conceptual metaphor to reassess the concept of "cultural pathology." The paper aims to demonstrate that this concept has gradually become detached from its original context and history, estranged from its very origins. To this end, it first analyzes the foundational metaphor of "society as an organism," in which the concept of social pathology is rooted, and examines and critiques four major approaches to social pathology. Then, focusing on the notion of "culture" and drawing on the views of Islamic thinkers, culture is defined as "a shared system of meaning among human beings" and "the spirit of society." Subsequently, the metaphor of "Mulla Sadra's human" is proposed as an alternative to the purely biological metaphor of the "organism"—a metaphor that emphasizes the relationship between body and soul and conceives of society's survival as cultural and spiritual. On this basis, cultural pathology is understood as the recognition of disturbances and semantic ruptures within the society's system of meaning, evaluated in relation to the ultimate end (the Perfect Human). The paper concludes that the Sadrian conception of the human is effective as a cognitive metaphor for understanding society, while noting that although cognitive metaphors are efficient tools for explaining concepts, they always carry a significant burden of interpretation, and that by reinterpreting a metaphor, one can create a new conceptual structure and engage critically with it.