JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGICAL RESEARCH
Year:2017 | Volume:18 | Issue:2 (70)|Papers Count:11

As commonly accepted and believed by Muslims, the noble Quran is Allah’s words (“kalāmullā”) retelling those facts Allah have created within the terminological framework of what have been revealed to Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). As human knowledge (esp. philosophy of language and linguistics) was gradually taking steps in progress along with the expansion of some theoretical and practical scholarships in the contemporary Islam world, there gradually was a proliferative tendency for different views on the topic in question. The prophetic reading of world constitutes the general title of sequential writings whose attitudes recline in a distinctive way toward Quranic revelation. One the questions to which this view endeavors to respond in a distinctive way than the aforementioned one is “who is the announcer of Quran?” According to this view, Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is the announcer of Quran. The aim of this article is to illustrate the arguments for the abovementioned idea brought forth by this view: For their purpose here, the authors have chosen one of the arguments entitled linguistic argument as their main objective. Therefore, this article firstly formulates the mentioned argument, and finally makes an evaluation of its linguistic major premises. Exact deliberations portray the fact that the argument is faced with severe insufficiencies to the extent that one cannot easily accept it.

The aim of this article is to illustrate Heidegger’s criticism of the concept of world in Descartes’ thought. This criticism finds its grounds on a novel conception of world Heidegger has brought forward in Being and Time, and pursued in his ensuing writings. The method of this article lies originally in analyzing the concept of world on the basis of the two philosophers’ views, and finally drawing a comparison between them. The Cartesian world has been characterized as extension but the Heideggerian world is indeed a web/network of relations constituting Dasein’s life. Dasein is in the world but the reverse does not hold true: the world is not in Dasein’s mind. The world is a basic background in which there lies the possibility of making relations, and giving significance toward the ready-to-hand. Henceforward, Heidegger, in some writings of his later thought, criticizes the Cartesian concept of world. In “The Age of World Picture” and “The Question Concerning Technology”, Heidegger pays careful attention to the transformation of world into picture and energy-source both of which are the essential consequences of Descartes’ conception of world. The conclusion of this article portrays the fact that the sovereignty of technology in contemporary era stands in line with the Cartesian conception of world.

As we take it for granted, regardless of some taken presuppositions and with respect to bringing the “exclusive or” into play, three modes are perceivable for the philosophical question of “the principality of existence or quiddity”. Some Muslim thinkers have sorted out a theory in this regard and others have argued for their own adopted view; while the mode thinkers have taken to stride in the debate at hand shows their disagreement lied based on a priori principles. Naturally, the concept of “existence” and “quiddity” can be considered as the most fundamental conceptual origins of the debate in question. In this article, adopting the method related to history of philosophy and on the basis of ascriptions of “existence” –to which some thinkers have given meticulous thought-, some outstanding analyses and comparisons in terms of thinkers’ exchanges have been accomplished.  This research findings are as follows: Firstly, the concept of “existence” should not be called the most known thing per se as it does possess various ascriptions. Secondly, as the dispute concerning the principality or abstractedness of existence is not a matter of demonstration, one cannot argue merely for one theory so to simultaneously undermine other ones. However, this question entirely relies upon the primary perception each thinker has taken for “existence”. Thirdly, since some ascriptions of “existence” imply its concrete composition with quiddity, it’s no longer intelligible to simultaneously speak of the abstractedness and principality of the two sides.

In this article, by adopting descriptive-analytic method, Jonathan Edwards’ and Feyz Kashani’s views on the relationship between reason and faith have been evaluated. The derived results portray the fact that Edwards and Kashani, as two influential theologians of respectively Christianity and Islam, have robustly laid stress upon the role of heart (illumination) in theological frameworks; they have neither denied the role rational knowledge plays in human life nor eliminate/reproach it, though considering believers’ performances as reliant mostly on hearty (illuminative) discernment. These two theologians’ jargons on reason seems prima facie as identical, but this research will throw light of inquiry upon the fact that Edwards, in spite of giving a minimum role to rational knowledge, considers it to be effectless on believers’ practical structure of faith, whereas Kashani considers it to have a positive role in providing bedrock for heartfelt practical knowledge. On this detail, not only does Kashani, in contrast to Edwards’ view, give an important role to reason in practical faith but maintains that degrees of faith will vary on the basis of believers’ intellectual and practical potentials. Though one may not forget that Kashani, in line with Edwards, holds that mere knowledge can never be sufficient and knowledge will occur once hearty affirmation entered on the scene-which is a matter of divine impartation (exuberation).

Muslim scholars have put forward various expositions pertaining to religious knowledge. One of the innovative viewpoints on this matter belongs to Ayatollah Javadi Amoli. As an advocate of religious knowledge, he maintains that for knowledge to be truly knowledge (not illusion or imagination) there should be a religiosity; knowledge is nothing but religious. To ascribe religiosity to all kinds of human knowledge is to meet the requisite of exactness and methodicality for any so-called scientific propositions. Authentic knowledge is to interpret the divine creation and acts, and giving explanation for divine act is an Islamic doctrine despite the fact that the knower is not able to grasp it and considers God’s creation to be nature itself. This viewpoint does have fundamental backgrounds and presuppositions with which the authors have proceeded by referring to and analyzing the elementary principles in his authored works. In the end, some criticisms of his view will be presented. In the realm of religious knowledge, this theory, despite its systematicity, encounters such serious problems as confused reasoning on divine, religious and Islamic concepts; internal inconsistency; methodological incompetency; admissibility of using “creation” instead of “nature”; objectionability of consequences of considering all branches of knowledge as religious. What impels this theory to be inefficient lies mostly in its whole reliance on the actual state (or substance level) than the apparent state (or assertion level).

Rationalityis a subject-matter for what pertains to epistemology, axiology, and belief justification. It deals mostly with the clarification of truth (and its criteria) and evaluation criteria of human miscellaneous sciences. The aim of this article is to offer an explanation for Foley’s comprehensive schema for rationality. Denying the possibility of a necessary relationship between theory of knowledge and justified belief, he takes some strides in completing and modifying the primary project of Aristotelian telos-oriented conception of rationality. Having illustrated the mentioned strides, this article will elucidate Foley’s two requisites for the comprehensiveness of rational evaluation (taking into account of individual’s all goals including theoretical and practical ones, and deconfining the adopted perspective). With due careful attention to the important role pragmatic goals and reasons play in Foley’s schema, this article strives to illustrate the fact that how the mentioned reasons bear indirect impacts upon the rational evaluation of phenomena, and do the same upon the characterization of necessary criteria for justified belief. The current impact is pertaining to the subject to-be-believed and the believer’s social role. The result and conclusion of this article is to introduce Foley’s theory as a relatively comprehensive and efficient understanding of rationality; a theory toward which there have simultaneously been raised some objections including yielding relativism, over-leniency, neglectfulness to social objective criteria, unapologeticity, instrumentalism, and neglectfulness to other kinds of rationality other than rational one.

By putting forward a divine introvertive existence of the active intelligence within his book entitled al-Shawādhid al-Rubūbiyya, the third Ishrāq (illumination) of the third Mashhad, Mulla Sadra has brought forth a novel theory of the transition and/or becoming process of soul. Although the active intelligence’s existence-in-itself is the same exactly as its mode of existence for the soul and as one of the modes of the soul’s modes, it can be recognized also as the soul’s telos and perfection. Accordingly, there arises some kind of justification for the soul’s passivity and affection generated from the divine introvertive existence of active intelligence, and for the soul’s attachment and unity with the active intelligence. Hereupon, the active intelligence acts simultaneously as the agent of the soul’s existence as well as its telos. To Hegel, “the Absolute” wholly shares its essence with the subject; here lies the nature of the subject and the subject’s telos is to become absolute as though the Absolute is a mode among many other ones of the subject. Consequently, the “soul” intelligibly becomes and unite with the self-thinking self (Geist) or pure self-consciousness. In this transformation, the respects of causation and telos are both identical. The Absolute constitutes itself through self-consciousness so as to become Geist on a temporal process. The aim of this article is to analyze and yield an exact comparison between the two theories, and to clarify that both of them, despite their differences, explain the soul’s epistemic alteration by exploiting the concept of self-consciousness.

Carroll’s paradox calls the most fundamental concept of logic, namely the concept of inference, into challenge, and appears to convey that one cannot pass, in any inferences, legitimately from premises to conclusion. So as to get hold of any possible solution out of their writings, the current article puts the paradox under three giant thinkers’ (i.e. Wittgenstein, Ibn Sīnā, and Tūsī) views. Wittgenstein puts forward an “inexpressible” but “showable” modus ponens in all inferences that leads ultimately to the distinction between “rule” and “premise”. Ibn Sīnā recognizes the logical principles as criterion (“mikyāl”) not as matter (“mādda”) for which the same exactly holds as the above distinction. Also, Tūsī speaks of the necessity of any syllogism to have an “assistant” and “concomitant” modus ponens that can be considered as the iteration of Wittgenstein’s “inexpressible-but-showable modus ponens” leading as before to the mentioned distinction. As a key solution to Carroll’s paradox, one should make a robust distinction between “rule” and “premise”, and bring inadmissibility to converting the former to the latter.