Ayeneh Ma‘refat
Year:2009 | Volume:- | Issue:20|Papers Count:9

The issue of motion and its existence is one of the important issues in Avicenna’s physics and metaphysics. Avicenna refers to three definitions of motion in his works and based on those definitions conclude that motion is a matter of existence and its opposite of motion, immobility, is a matter of nonexistence.With regard to motion, Avicenna puts emphasis on the mediating movement which refers to motion as passing from one point into another or from its beginning to its end as a whole. This view of motion which exists in the mind is different from the cutting movement which refers to the unchanging, permanent condition of a moving body. The present article is an attempt to analyze critically Avicenna’s view of motion.

Antony Flew is one of the atheistic figures of the contemporary world who is famous for his argument against the existence of God, so his refraining for his atheistic position is of high importance for the religious community. This was the impetus for the authors to make an attempt to find out what made Antony Flew change his position. It is hypothesised that the new versions of the teleological argument which is based on the new findings in the field of biology especially the findings related to DNA is the major cause of his change of position. It is through the investigation of the above hypothesis that it is demonstrated Flew has only been able to move to the stage of natural theology, that is, a sort of Aristotelian theology which is based on rational necessity. He has a long way to go to get to revealed theism.

Understanding the human being is an integral part of human knowledge. Since antiquity, numerous thinkers have explored the human constitution, and each has tried to provide answers to the fundamental questions in this regard so that they can, in this way, reduce man’s anxieties and inner pain. Some of these questions are: Does man have solely a materialistic structure? Or is he a dual-natured creature that has primordial traces in addition to his physical dimension which make him distinct from other creatures? Does accepting the idea of internal constitution mean that he has some actual inherent characteristics or is he a sheer reactionist who accepts any role given to him? What is the difference between a primordial and a non-primordial characteristic.The main purpose of the present article is to clarify the viewpoint expressed in this regard by Allamah Tabatabai, the great contemporary exegetic interpreter in his highly esteemed Almizan exegetic interpretation (though in the process of exploration, the viewpoints of other thinkers have also been presented).Through this investigation, we can realize that, in relation to primordial understanding, he has presented a different viewpoint. The above-mentioned issue is one of the fundamental questions which has an effect on the fields of management, economics, culture, politics and so on.

There is a discrepancy among Islamic philosophers and theologians on the presence of purpose in God’s actions and the lack of it. The Ash'rite theologians consider any kind of purpose in God’s actions in opposition with His essential perfection and so deny it altogether. In contrast, the theological philosophers and 'Adleeyeh theologians' (believers in divine justice) believe that God has a purpose and an end in His actions and no action emanates from Him without being directed toward a specific purpose. But there is controversy over the target of God’s actions among these scholars.Adleeyeh theologians believe that purpose must be targeted toward someone or something other than God; otherwise, it would be against His essential perfection.While philosophers argue that purpose must be targeted to God himself, otherwise, it would be against this principle that a sublime being does not need to mean and is not perfected by it. What all scholars agree on is that ‘the violation of purpose is obscene’ since it leads to the union of wanting and not wanting a single act which is impossible.The principle of ‘obscenity of purpose violation’ has so many applications in rational theology that one can hardly find any other principle with a comparable number of applications. The principle of the presence of purpose in God’s actions is discussed in relation to divine unity first and then it is related to the other basic tenets of faith such as justice, prophecy, leadership (Imamat) and resurrection.

The present article is an attempt to reassess Aristotelian philosophy by dealing with his axiology. For this purpose first axiology is introduced as a kind of rigorous knowledge and then its relation with the other two types of philosophical knowledge, that is, ontology and epistemology is explained. Then it is illustrated that values such as goodness and beauty are the same as the formal and final causes in axiological explanation of any object and that, at least in nature, the goodness and the final cause of any object are real and thus internal to the nature of the object itself. In contrast, opposite values such as beauty / splendour and good / bad, etc.only exist in relation to us. The claim is that such values do not have objective being. From an epistemological point of view, values are recognized through their formal cause, that is, their universal form. In Aristotelian axiology, the concept oftelos is a fundamental one which shows that Aristotle’s philosophical thoughts constitute a coherent system. This coherent system enabled Aristotle to claim that values have ontological and epistemological aspects just like object and knowledge. He considers values, objects and knowledge as hierarchical. In other words, every object is granted a status in such a hierarchy of evaluation and this has its roots in the concept oftelos.Aristotle, as a philosopher and as an evaluator, could not be free of evaluation in ontology and epistemology.With the same approach, the article, in its second part will demonstrate that telos in Aristotelian ethics is favourable perfection which human beings are endeavouring to achieve. In this way humans should make sure of the domination of reason, that is, rationality should govern their behaviour.

Socrates claims that all virtues are the same, and this unity of virtues in his view means that virtue is knowledge. Plato, under the influence of his teacher believed in the unity of virtues; however, his view is not free of ambiguity at first glance. This is introduced in the dialogues between Protagoras and Laches. The virtues introduced in these two dialogues are: piety, courage, temperance, justice and wisdom. He clearly believes in the unity of virtues but this unity is expressed in two different ways: (1) There is one virtue with five different names; (2) Every one of these virtues has its own essence and definition but all virtues are necessarily related. The present article first discusses the unity of virtues and the inconsistency between the two views expressed in the dialogues between Protagoras and Laches and then, with reference to the final dialogues (Republic, Statesman, Laws) presents his final views.

The definition of ‘lie’ seems obvious at first glance but with a second glance a number of questions are raised which need to be answered. For a lie to occur four conditions should be fulfilled. First, lying requires that someone makes a statement (statement condition).Second lying requires the person to believe that the statement is false (untruthfulness condition). Third, lying requires that the statement is addressed to someone (addressee condition). Fourth, lying requires that a statement is made to delude the addressee (condition of deluding the addressee). There is a distinction between lying and deception. Lying is a kind of deception which is exclusive to verbal and non-verbal expression and not to both expression and action. In addition, lying is exclusive to statements and not to any type of verbal and non-verbal expressions. Lying implies the opposition of the liar’s purpose with what has already happened in reality and not the opposition of the form of the expression with the reality or the liar’s purpose. One of the controversial issues in Islamic theology has been the nature of lying, that is, whether the wrongness of lying is essential or accidental. We can deal with this issue by referring to the definition of lying. If we define lying as making an untruthful statement, the wrongness of act of lying would be accidental, but if we define it as making a statement with the intention to deceive others then its wrongness would be essential.