JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGICAL RESEARCH
Year:2016 | Volume:17 | Issue:3 (67)|Papers Count:9

Nature- based ethics is the way of understanding felicity on the basis of man's natural capacities and powers, which had existed in Greek tradition, especially in Aristotelian one, and was later followed in St. Aquinas's attitude and his tradition. John Finiss, one of the contemporary thinkers and followers of this moral tradition, has tried to depict the path of understanding and realization of man's felicity through nature-based ethics, following Aquinas. Allamah Tabatabaii has also based his moral views on man's natural characteristic and capacities and provided an account of ethical theory of natural law in Islamic tradition. Reviewing the views of these two thinkers in terms of ontology of values shows they are different in the type of realistic and ontological approach, and the number, the manner of existence, and the type of relationship between basic goods, despite significant similarities. The analysis of these differences indicates that Tabatabaii's approach in ontological dimension of moral theory of natural law is more reasonable and defensible than that of Finiss. The present paper seeks to review and analyze the views of these two thinkers about the nature based-ethics in terms of ontology of issues related to the theory of natural law.

Using a descriptive- analytical method, the present paper mainly seeks to review, analyze and criticize Fakhr Razi's view about the stages of man's perfection. He defines perfection as the strengthening factor of theoretical and practical intellect and uses it as an equivalent for felicity in some of his works. In his different works, Razi depicts several stages for perfection. His different views about perfection can be first divided into two types: the stages of man's perfection in this world and the stages of his perfection in other world. The stages of man's perfection in this world can be classified philosophically, morally and mystically. Different accounts are used to explain each of these types.

The issue of miracle is closely related to the affirmation of Prophets’ Prophecy and is an important theological issue in the field of sciences of the Quran. Over the history, many scholars and thinkers have written about it and numerated different miraculous aspects for the Quran, including expressive miracle, hidden and mysterious reports and scientific miracle. There is unanimity about the definition of miracle which contains the concept of incapacity. However, the factor of incapacity has been ignored. If this factor is correctly explained, then the main aspect of the miracle of the Quran will be clear. The present paper first analyzes common disabling elements and characteristics between the Quran and miracles of other prophets and then reviews the definition of miracle and the aims of miracles. Finally it provides a new classification of the types of miracles. To this end, the first part of the paper represents previous scholars' views about miracle and the second part criticizes their views and proves its own claim, using Quranic verses and logical arguments. It is seems that the only miraculous aspect of the Quran is that it is the God's knowledge which is basically different from that of man. And if some scholars regard eloquence, rhetoric, hidden and mysterious reports and scientific miracle as the miracle of the Quran, they are horizontal to the main miraculous aspect, because the Quran is the speech of the absolute all-Wise God, so it is natural for the Quran to have these external and secondary aspects.

The present paper examines Korsgaard's view about action and its constitutive features. Korsgaard believes that the constitutive function of action is to constitute the agent. On the other hand, autonomy and efficacy are two constitutive features of agent. Since the constitutive feature of anything is normative for that thing, every agent must act autonomously and efficiently in order to constitute his/her own agency. The procedure that Korsgaard proposes to achieve autonomy and efficacy is the Kantian categorical and hypothetical imperative. Korsgaard holds that action is not restricted to human beings and animals are somehow autonomous, though they are not bound by Kantian imperatives. But autonomy in the deeper sense is to choose the principles of action, and in this sense just human being can be regarded as autonomous.

Davidson’s anomalous monism is one of the physicalistic explanations of mind, mental traits and states. According to this view, all events are existentially physical phenomena with physical and mental descriptions. Mental states, however, are not reduced to physical states. Mental states have physical characteristics, so they have causal relationship with physical states, which is not systematic for intentional mental states. The relationship between mental and physical states is explained according to the theory of supervenience. The present paper, first, explains the principles of anomalous monism such as causal interaction, regularity of causality, irregularity of mental affairs, and supervenience . Then it reviews and criticizes the theory of supervenience by posing some problems such as the necessity of real truthfulness of laws, impossibility of multilateral determination of the effects of mental and physical causes, sufficiency of a systematic order in explaining the relationship between phenomena, explaining causality on the basis of counterfactual conditionals and incompatibility of the lack of bridging laws to relate mental and physical domains.

Tustari's commentary dates back to the third century ('AH') and is one of the closest commentaries of the Quran to the time of its revelation. The mystical taste of this commentary and its theological and literary features adds to its importance. The most important aspect of this commentary is its mystical approach which has always attracted and influenced mystics and scholars after him. Emphasizing on mystical approach, Tustari has used hadith and linguistics. He has not only paid attention and focused on esoteric meaning and mystical esoteric commentary of Quranic verses but also taken into consideration the external commentary, using literary rules and the Prophet's hadiths. Tustari's esoteric interpretations are not devoid of order and criteria. His frequent use of microcosmic look at macrocosmic verses and the verses related to human relationship shows the orderliness of this method. Providing other worldly and merciful interpretation of the verses related to chastisement and this world is another mystical rule used by Tustari. He has used preaching approach under some verses related to patience, contentment and confidence, which has been followed after him. Showing the orderliness and normality of his mystical esoteric interpretation, the present paper seeks to provide some criteria in this regard.

After Augustine, Thomas Aquinas is one of the two leading figures in the middle ages and, as the most influential philosopher in the new period of the church, has systematic works from which valuable philosophical propositions about art and aesthetics can be extracted. Hence, the present paper hypothesizes that there is a justified distinction between pleasures resulted from perceiving beauty and pleasures resulted from corporal appetites on the basis of Thomas’s statements, and uses a descriptive- analytical method to examine the elements of the hypothesis under minor issues. In the first two chapters, the nature of aesthetic pleasure has been explained, relying on other related influential philosophical components which include the review of the process of the perception of beauty based on Aquinas's theory of cognition, the quality of the movement of "appetite" in perceiving goodness, different stages of this movement and its distinction with pleasures resulted from the perception of beauty. In the two final chapters, the distinction between aesthetic pleasure and corporal pleasure is explained, with emphasis on previous preliminaries.