JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGICAL RESEARCH
Year:2010 | Volume:11 | Issue:2 (42)|Papers Count:12

As opposed to intelligences, Celestial souls are abstract entities who need body for their act and effect; they are discussed in Ibn-Sina's philosophy. The significance of analyzing these entities is not just because of their position in ancient astronomy. It can be stated that, accepting these souls by Ibn-Sina and repudiating them by Ibn-Roshd has had an essential influence on the destiny of philosophy in Islamic and western world.In this article we are going to show the position of these souls in Ibn-Sina's cosmology; meanwhile we analyze his argument in favour of them; then, we show the way Ibn-Sina’s belief in celestial souls makes his philosophy different from peripatetic philosophy and takes him up to oriental philosophy. In fact, Ibn-Sina's theory of celestial souls has one of its origins in oriental philosophy. Finally, the similarity of celestial souls and human souls will be discussed. Here we have a hermeneutic circle; in other words, we can know celestial souls by self-knowledge or deliberation on our human souls; meanwhile, by knowing the celestial souls, our self-knowledge can be transformed too.

The religious sphere in Heidegger's thought is one of the persistent questions that consider the relation of religion, theology, philosophy in his life and his idea. His argument about ideas, religious characters and also his own points about the significance of the ideas and characters in the formation of his philosophic project, illuminates the role of religion in general and Christian theology in particular in his life and his thoughts. Although his thoughts have several sources, but Christian theology and Gnosticism have had a permanent influence on them.Heidegger's bases in existence analysis have common aspects with Augustine, Eckhart, Luther, and Kierkegaard. Heidegger has used phenomenology to analyze original life and believes that this life can be touched in a religious approach and such an experience can be found in primary Christianity. Although religious experience is not his only favorite subject he considers religion as a possible form of life, completely different from philosophy. Although Heidegger does not comment on the existence of God and does not take the same religious and metaphysical attitude about God, he gives some attributes about existence that is usually used for God. Lots of statements Heidegger has uttered about existence remind one of negative theology. His viewpoint can be considered as an attempt for forming a faith in contemporary world beyond its traditional forms.

Debate about moral relativism and moral absolutism is one of the most important and old subjects of philosophic deliberations in ethics; but the result of this discussion is not limited to ethics. The position a person takes on relativism or non-relativism of main values and criteria, affects his viewpoint, stance, social and legal position. In this article after articulating the related concepts, we revise each kind of moral relativism; and finally, we come up with the main reasons given for each one and evaluate them.

The way in which the Arab thinkers encountered and reflected enlightenment and modernism determines their Arabic enlightenment. Some of these thinker's welcoming of enlightenment and western intellectuals, started with tendency to social values and philosophical and mental features of European civilization; thus, this approach with tendency to new researches in humanities, like structuralism, linguistics, hermeneutics, semantics and anthropology by a group of brilliant and contemporary Arab intellectuals like Mohammad-al-Jaberi and Mohammad Arkoun entered the area of criticizing Arabic-Islamic reason or traditional Islamic thoughts. In this essay we try to discuss the basic criticism of Arabic–Islamic reason in their ideas and retell and compare their Arabic enlightenment, by explaining the intellectual premises of these two thinkers.

This article discusses the theory of functionalism in the contemporary philosophy of Mind and compares it with Aristotle's functionalism. As the word "ergon" is of a high significance in Aristotle's philosophy, sometimes he is regarded as the pioneer of this theory. Therefore the relation between these two theories and their similarity may be worth considering.What follows will reveal that different versions of the theory of new functionalism are not matched with Aristotle's idea seemingly but his viewpoint can be considered as one of the attitudes in functionalism. Although Aristotle's theory of mater and form, together with his emphasis on essence, is not valid in the light of new findings, his functionalistic approach to the relation between body and soul is of a high significance.

Guardianship is a general fact and divine feature that flows through all levels of the universe and is distributed into different ranks and based on such ranks needs ending.Neglecting these ranks causes lots of agitation and obscurity in comprehending and interpreting Ibn-Arabi and his followers' words. Seyed Jalal-al-Din Ashtiani has a significant role in compiling the theory of ending of guardianship in Ibn-Arabi's words and resolving its difficulty. Considering his mind as a guardianship follower and his scientific liberty, he tried to interpret and explain the most challengeable arguments in Ibn-Arabi's school, with proficiency and mastery in Islamic Philosophy and Gnosticism, in a way that he could minimize its contradictions with Shia's bases.He criticizes Ibn-Arabi's thought explicitly and does not give up his principles; meanwhile, he refers Mohyi-al-Din misgivings to his conformations to prove that ending of guardianship after Respectful prophet of Islam, comes true with Imam Ali by level of ranking and with Hazrat Mahdi by time.In this article after defining and categorizing the concept of guardianship according to the works of Ashtiani, we investigate the extentions of ending of guardianship and explain his attitude towards Alavi, Mahdavi and Christian guardianship and show the effects of considering ranks in order to remove agitation from Ibn-Arabi's Words insofar as it is possible.

Nowadays, there are three main viewpoints on abortion in ethical controversies: opposition to abortion except for emergency situations, absolute agreement, and moderate viewpoint or conditional agreement. One of the important approaches among absolute or conditional defenders of abortion is the one which is based on the right of the woman to his body; in this approach the most important and influential reasoning is of Judith Thomson in his famous article "Defending Abortion".Thomson does not use a separate reasoning to prove his claim, saying at least in some cases like rape, abortion is morally permissible, but uses the right of the mother to his body to weaken the absolute opponents' reasoning about abortion. One of the most important criticisms of abortion is of Francis Beckwith. Problems which are presented by Beckwith are categorized under three main titles; "legal", "ideological", "philosophic". The subject of this article is the analysis of Thomson's reasoning and the criticisms of it, especially philosophic criticisms presented by Beckwith.

One of the important discussions in the history of theology in Islamic and western culture has been whether intellect can solve all of the problems of human beings or not? Mulla Sadra, the inheritor of peripatetic and oriental philosophy and Islamic Gnosticism and the establisher of transcendent philosophy, regards intellect as a powerful instrument for resolving difficulties of many humanistic and divine problems; but he didn’t neglect its limits.According to his works such asAsfar, Mafatih-al-Ghueib, Illumination of Kafi's Principles, Shavahed-al-Robubiah, Three Principles' Treatise, and etc., the writer thinks that Mulla Sadra believes in limits of intellect in different cases like, soul, names and attributes of God, mysteries and secrets of existence world, the facts of existence world, the corporal Return; also most of the scholars believe that he regarded intellect and faith complimentary. In this essay we try to study these issues.

Prophet's plurality of understanding is one of the reasons that some of the defenders of pluralism of the truthfulness of religions use to improve their viewpoints.They have interpreted their hypothesis from two viewpoints; first, prophets with their own skills and special states have looked at the unique truth from their own viewpoint and have offered their different perceptions to their followers as religion; and the second, illuminations and manifestations of God have been different for different prophets and each religion has a different reason for its appearance. They rely on some verses of Quran to state their hypothesis. In this essay we try to analyze this hypothesis from both viewpoints, mostly religious and based on the verses of Quran.

This article is an analytical research on Heidegger's position and his existential thought in Richard Rorty's philosophy and its purpose is to show the direct and indirect influence of Heidegger's idea on the formation of Rorty's neo-pragmatic thought. Although Rorty criticizes some of Heidegger's opinions, specially the prior Heidegger and regards him as confined and captive to western metaphysical tradition, he does not deny his influence on himself. In this essay we try to present some of these influences along with Rorty's criticisms on Heidegger.

In this article we consider the subject of time from Saint Augustine and Sadr-al-Moteallehin’s viewpoints and compare them. Augustine does not consider the time as an external and objective fact, but regards it as a mental entity; however it is not separated from objective entities and is interpreted in terms of change and movement and the events which occur in the past and future.Based on the principles of transcendent philosophy particularly his special viewpoint on substantial motion and existentiality, priority of existence to essence, Sadr-al-Motealelhin regards time as the fourth dimension of matter and considers it as the sign and the way of fluid's existence. In other words, he considers the time as the analytical accident that intellect can drive it from the way of the existence of material bodies and entities.

Man as the noblest of all creatures, contains rational soul and the soul contains two faculties of theoretical and practical. Rational faculties is called theoretical intellect viewing the relation of soul and active intellect and practical faculty is called practical intellect viewing the relation of soul and body. But among Islamic philosophers there is not a unique interpretation and commentary on practical and theoretical intellect. In this article, we first try to consider the word "intellect" semantically, and then study Ibn-Sina's view on the ranks of practical intellect and theoretical intellect and their functions and the different philosophic viewpoints on these two faculties.