Ayeneh Ma‘refat
Year:2009 | Volume:- | Issue:17|Papers Count:8

The new developments in the field of hermeneutics and exegetic theory has, in certain areas, presented challenges to theology as a text-based field of knowledge with deep connections with the exegesis of holy scriptures. The present article intends to examine the effect of contemporary hermeneutics in both aspects of ‘exegesis as a theory of reading’ and ‘exegesis theory as philosophical hermeneutics and meta-exegesis’ on the field of traditional theology and to put emphasis on this point that each theological approach necessarily relies on a specific exegetic theory and to study the interaction between hermeneutics and theology in the following three domains:a. The critical challenge which contemporary hermeneutics presents to theology as a whole.b. The study of the new theological problems posed by contemporary hermeneutics.c. Re-examination of the effect of theological beliefs in hermeneutics.

The position of active intellect in peripatetic philosophy is an intricate issue. One problem round this notion is that while Aristotle himself did not say anything about active intellect his Alexandrian and Neo-platonic commentators theorized this notion. Avicenna, as an independent philosopher, who has been introduced as the representative of peripatetic philosophy while he himself has rejected this claim, has a view of active intellect, consistent with his own philosophical system, which is different from the views of commentators like Alexander of Aphrodisias and Themistius. Thomas Aquinas, a philosopher and Christian theologian, who has been influenced by Avicenna in his theologian-philosophic thoughts, because of his Christian-Aristotelian position on this issue, disagrees with Avicenna on some aspect of Avicenna’s active intellect theory. What the present article intends to achieve is to answer to the question whether Aquinas’s opposition has an ontological or epistemological origin.

In the present article, through a discussion on the different models of humanistic explanations of revelation which are specifically referred to in the Orientalists’ works، seven models are presented. The author tries to show that the common origin in all these explanations is a kind of negative approach in theology in the new era. According to this approach, God is a transcendental being beyond man and the world with no interference in history and nature. With this explanation, revelation which is a special kind of relationship between man and God would receive a humanistic justification instead of a divine one. The article also examines the relationship between negative theology and humanistic explanations of revelation with reference to verses from the holy Quran. Then the major argument of the article which is the relationship between humanistic explanations of revelation and a special kind of negative theology in the new era is presented and finally it is shown that the moderation between anthropomorphism and deanthropomorphism (purification) in Islamic knowledge reach at no such conclusions.

In Islamic mysticism, man is considered a multi-staged being that possesses different existential realms each of which is a window to the mysterious being of this puzzle of creation. Among Muslim mystics, Mawlana Jalalaldin Rumi is significant for his unveiling of the inner secrets of human life. Through his grasp of the deep religious teachings and the experiences of the former mystics and mixing them with his own mystical experiences, Mawlavi was able to present to the world in his works in prose and verse a very deep and transcendental mystical anthropology.The human spiritual transcendence in Mowlana’s thought has two stages; one is barrier-removal and the pathology of human spirit and the other is the how of his spiritual breeding. Mawlana, with his distinction between the real self and the virtual self, has depicted in the best way possible through his school of love mysticism the devastating consequences of man negligence of his divine realm and the barriers which make him negligent of his real essence. He has, as a spiritual physician, been able to present to the world the remedies of human soul illnesses through identifying the true causes of human spiritual pain and suffering.

In the history of human thought, various ways have been proposed for proving the existence of God. Among the proposed arguments, the most controversial one is the ontological argument. The ontological argument tries to prove the existence of God through analyzing the concept of God. This argument goes beyond any empirical concept. Historically speaking, this argument dates back to Aristotle, but, in western philosophy, it was Anselm who introduced it as an argument for the first time in his Proslogion. Since Anselm’s time, pros and cons have written in detail to prove their position. Among them, Descartes’ defence of this argument in the 17th century has attracted the attention of thinker in a special way. The different views expressed by some of the contemporary Moslem philosophers on the validity or lack of validity of this argument are also interesting. Altogether, with close attention, the ontological argument provides an invalid ambiguous reason which is based on a fallacy confusing the concept of existence with its denotation.

Sir David Ross is considered the most prominent figure of deontological ethics after Kant. The present article aims at explaining his ingenious theory of distinguishing between ‘prima facie ethical duties’ and ‘practical ethical duties’ to resolve the conflict which was a problem with Kantian ethics. It further intends to present some important meta-ethical views which have been influential in the normative view of ethics. Ross was an ethical objectivist who believed that moral properties are factual attributes of the world. He was also an ethical intuitionist who believed that the fundamental moral concepts of goodness and rightness are indefinable but human intellect is capable of intuitional understanding of the right and wrong of certain fundamental moral concepts. With regard to values and duties, Ross was a pluralist. In his view, conflict can be detected in prima facie duties and not in practical ethical duties. A prima facie duty is an action which, due to its right-making properties, may seem obligatory but it will become an obligatory practical duty only if there was no other prima facie duty which would have priority over this one. If that is the case, the prioritized duty would become an obligatory practical duty and the prima facie duty would not be obligatory. This way the problem of conflict is resolved.

Are the beliefs founded on religious experiences justified? William Alston tries, through postulating a similarity between religious experiences and sensory experiences, to show that the beliefs founded on religious experiences are as justified as the beliefs founded on sensory experiences. In this article, we try to defend Alston’s claim using an approach which is to some extent different from the one adopted by Alston. At first, we introduce an epistemic justification system by means of the concept of reliability of epistemic practices; then by introducing three steps/levels for each epistemic practice we reduce the reliability of epistemic practices to the reliability of these steps/levels. Finally, we will show that an epistemic practice founded on religious experiences is as reliable as practices founded on sensory experiences for the basic reason that each step/level of this experience is as reliable as its corresponding step/level in an epistemic practice founded on sensory experiences.