Ayeneh Ma‘refat
Year:2007 | Volume:- | Issue:9|Papers Count:6

The problem of becoming or change is one of the prior metaphysical problems which have been explained by different philosophers in terms of very divergent thesis. Some philosophers have denied even the reality of change, while some others have established their philosophical systems upon it. The first philosopher who claimed the universal and permanent changing of the things was Heraclitus.At the same time, this problem has in none of the Muslim philosophical systems such crucial status as it does in Sadra's. This article presents these two philosophers’ views briefly with a view to compare them, and after considering some points about Sadra's position, it will take it possible to have somewhat similar interpretations of the two.

In this article, three stages of rising, flourishing and falling of deism are studied and reviewed. First, deism, reason and revelation are considered to pave the way to the essential truth and can both separately guide us close to God and the immortality of soul.Influenced by the progress of science, deism, at second stage, leads man astray from the Worshiped God of all religions to a God which is figured as a cosmic engineer. This God is the very God of gaps, not the creator and the teacher. The third stage is -the era of the absence of that cosmic engineer or God of gaps. This God has forsaken this gigantic cosmic machine, and neither has a presence in the history of human being nor satisfies our needs.Deism declined and ended up dead for three reasons :1) Inner weakness of argument from design; the only argument adopted by deist. 2) The abstract nature of its concepts. 3) The dominance of the church and its opposition to revelation.Thomas Hobbes, Henry More, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton had a strong influence on deism. They had been influenced by Descartes, had criticized him and shared his ideas as well. Their understanding of the nature of science and its methodology had obviously a profound impact on their followers and later philosophers. Another purpose of this article is to analyze the discussions put forward from the view of these four thinkers and to study their ideas about God.

The question of the originality of existence and validity of essence is one of the major issues in Transcendental Wisdom. But to consider existence as original and essence as valid; meaning that the external reality is the true example of existence and essence is limited to the sphere of validity, supposition and illusion is not approved. Hence this belief will entangle us in a challenge which can not be dealt with unless we accept a new reading of the validity of essence.This article has tried to provide the readers with three kinds of interpretation of Mulla Sadra's writings: 1) To regard essence by its nature limited to the mind. 2) To know essence as-equal to existence. 3) To regard essence not as equal to existence but as the illusion of existence. And finally what the article tries to prove is that the first interpretation is stronger and more logical than the other interpretations in discussing essentials, accidentals, substance, accident, the ten categories and natural universals.It can be claimed that the meaning of the validity of essence in Mulla Sadra's works is to study essence as essence, otherwise the essence as an entity in the external world equals existence and essence cannot define existence or the illusion of it.

Meaning and concept of time and place are the challenging issues in philosophy and physics. From one view all material objects are found to be in time and place and from another view we do not have any especial sense of time and place. This is the reason why we have so many different ideas explaining theses concepts. Some thinkers regard time and place to be illusionary and some even regard them as external realities. Kant, the German philosopher with his strong influence on western philosophy, has interpreted time and place in his own especial way. He has brought these issues into the area of epistemology and has based his own epistemology on them. Bing strongly influenced by achievements in new science such as Newtonian physics and also Hume's skepticism, he is trying to justify the foundations of empirical science. He distinguishes intellect and pure reason as incapable of proving non material things such as God, soul, and so on. He believes that compound knowledge consists of object and cognitive forms. Object exists in the external world and is perceived through sensation but cognitive forms, at the stage of imagination are "time and place" and at the stage of affirmation are prior understanding knowledge. Thus whatever which does not lie in time and place is beyond man's knowledge. The result of this idea, as Kant clarifies, is to deny divine philosophy. Therefore, in this article, Kant's epistemological system is studied and his reasons and justifications are proven to be wrong.

Imam Mohammad Ghazali and Rene Descartes, two conspicuous thinkers from east and west, have in one way or another influenced their own era's thoughts and ideas. Hence they have caused great changes in human thoughts.Descartes influenced the new western philosophy and Ghazali paved the way for philosophy to go from East of Islamic world to its West (Andalusia and the north of Africa) and also paved the way for the emergence of great philosophers as Averroes (Ibn Roshd), Ibn Tofail and Averroes (Ibn Baje). The study of Gazali and Decartes' views familiarizes the readers with the transformation and changes of thoughts that these thinkers caused.The writer of this article intends to investigate how Ghazali and Descartes moved out from skepticism to faith.

This article, studying Farabi's Idea about fallacies and comparing them with Aristotle's views, implicitly depicts the transformation and progress of logic made in the area of fallacy from Aristotle's time to Farabi's. First of all we put a discussion forward called "the definition of fallacy" then. We study the various approaches in fallacy studies. Subsequently Aristotle and Farabi's Views about the definition of fallacy, approaches and target, are compared and contrasted. Finally the conclusions are drawn.