Wisdom and Philosophy
Year:2009 | Volume:5 | Issue:2 (18)|Papers Count:7

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55) focused his attention on the existential dements of our existence; among these elements the concepts of anxiety, dread, guilt and alienation are of primary importance. Existentialism has tried to discover the mysteries if man's existence, and helped him to find a way out of his loneliness, anxiety and dread that threaten his existence and survival, Man's dread caused by the assumption that he was thrown into this alien world. Pinter has depicted the images of life and death, being and non-being, and the reality of man's reduction into a cipher of non-being. His drama is a bitter commentary on human being's existence. In Pinter's world, peace and security remain a mere illusion, vulnerable to utter annihilation. His characters are paralyzed by anxiety and dread. Man's survival depends upon his existence in a room. It concludes that man's place in the world as Kierkegaard claimed is "insecure and non-securable" (Wick, 2006). Man is thrown into the world, and in his loneliness paralyzed by anxiety. The source of this anxiety as Kierkegaard claimed is nothingness.

The paper critically examines the pacifist doctrine, which maintai6ns that the practice of non-violence provides a guarantee for social peace. It scrutinizes the underlying assumptions if the theory, its essential characteristics as well as the extent to which it can actually promote social peace. The paper maintains that as a theory, pacifism holds great promise in the quest for a peaceful social order. However, it has a number of problems that inhibits its practical effectiveness.

This paper is a reflection on the interaction between metaphysics and science that has beet existed since the pre-modern epoch, an example of which was actualized in Aristotle's system of metaphysics and science. Yet, this interaction was gradually undermined fry the advent of scientific revolution especially the classic period of science in the 17th and 18th century in modern epoch. In the 19th century, the appearances of positivism caused metaphysics lose its meaningfulness and laid it aside from the realm of episteme and then put it in the sphere of tastes, emotions and passions. In the 2th century, philosophies and metaphysical systems, in the common sense, failed to direct sciences and claimed a sort of independence from sciences through raising technical problems infield, if language and logic.However, this independence supported metaphysics and philosophy versus techno-science, in the meanwhile metaphysics lost another main role, the raising rationality in the field of sciences. This article explains this problem after a brief introduction and argues that pursuit of this issue is not a technical-academic problem but a matter of human life.

This essay is an attempt to criticality understand the utility if the concept if postmodernism in African philosophy, and by extension the analysis if the postcolonial African predicament. Its urgency derives from the growing literature on the interpretation of the postmodern in African studies. For those I will call the "detractors", there is a certain conceptual absurdity in the idea of postmodernism in a continent that is just grappling with the exigencies if modernity. Thus, Africa cannot be postmodern before being modern. For the "champions" of the necessity of postmodern theorizing in Africa, postmodernism offer an avenue to escape out if the cul de sac of intellectual nativism that has preluded .Africa from the benefits of global open space if ideas. The essay argues that these critical interpretations emanate from an attempt to read too much into what I will call the postmodern minima. This strategy has the advantage, I contend, of giving African philosophers a leeway-- beyond the mere critique if Euro centrism--for confronting the twin problem of African identity and African development.

All historians and researchers of Islamic Philosophy think of 11th/11th Century (in Safavid Era) as a period of blossoming of Iranian-Shi'I philosophy and the emergence of figures such as Mir Damad, Shaykh Bahai, Mulla Sadra, and Mir Findiriski. Among them, Abul-Qasim Mir Findiriski has been less than other introduced, and scientific and practical aspects of his life have not been discussed in details. More important is his school of taste which, if we take into account his various spiritual And intellectual dimensions as well as his Sufi life style, cannot be classified under philosophical, intuitionist, and mystical schools then popular in the history of Islamic philosophy.On the one hand, he was teaching books such as Ibn Sina's Shifa and Qanun, and on the other, he was so interested in pious life of Dervishes and even life ,style of Indian Yugis. In addition, poems left by him under the title "Ya'iyah Odes" (odes ending in the vowel /i/), suggest mainly his mystical and Illuminationist-Platonist and Neo-Platonist-inclinations. And these poem, have caused various and even conflicting stories to be presented about his views and school of thought. Thus, it seems to be difficult and even impossible to specify his intellectual orientation and practical ,style. One of the analyses made in this regard is that Mir's thought and approach is described as eclectic, and he is regarded as the meeting point of different - and even conflicting - theoretical and practical attitudes. While neglecting the "Ya'iyab Odes" and the relevant commentaries, the author of this article has tried to describe and analyze Mir'c intellectual attitudes and possibly his philosophical system based on three works of him.

We can find theories on transcendent wisdom of Islam by Mulla sadra Shirazi. By his theory, called "trans-substantial motion", we try to prove man's soul creation and evolution. Fulfilling this theory, Mulla sadra considers some more prominent principles that are characterized by: the principality of existence, the gradation of existence, the unity between intelligent and intelligible, the universe temporal creation, the soul corporeal creation and its incorporeal permanence, the principle of unity in plurality, the principle of ultimate in world system and the corporeal resurrection and etc. These principles together provide theoretical and practicaiframeworks which draw the path of man's soul creation, and evolution, and man's life and ultimate. On the basis of these principles, Mulla Sadra hypothesizes that the origin and resurrection of man's soul and life is based on the trans-substantial motion. In fact, this opinion can explain corporeal creation of man's soul and mundane life, and finally his/ her motion to the supreme world only in the light of trans-substantial motion and also other principles such as the corporeal resurrection of man. The importance of man's creation and his/her spiritual subsistence and corporeal creation lies in his/ her life in this world and his/ her complete motion on the basis of his/ her acquired abilities in the material world.

This work examines the nature and causes of crises that are bedeviling human society, and argues the thesis that freedom has a pivotal role to play in the emergence of crises in society. The work takes it for granted that there are different forms of crisis and that the highest form of crisis in the world is war, which itself, has many variants. Consequently, when I speak of the causes of war, I am by so-doing talking about the phenomenon of war as a representative of all forms of war and as an example of a form of crisis in society. I am quite aware of the various factors that have been identified by scholars as the causes of crises, but there seems to be an omission of the place of freedom in their submissions. The paper therefore argues that all forms of deprivation are denials of freedom and that crises are mostly products of unhealthy by social relations which are often exhibited in a form of either a denial of freedom or an excessive exercise of it.