PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION RESEARCH (NAMAH-I HIKMAT)
Year:2014 | Volume:12 | Issue:1 (23) |Papers Count:8

Mulla Sadra declares that he is so affected by religion and intuition in his philosophy. His claims show that a number of his innovations in different subjects in his philosophy are achieved in the light of religious beliefs as well as intuitive knowledge. In this paper, I aim to probe into how and how much religion has made a role in his philosophy. His declarations show that he has experienced a kind of an existential transcendence at least two times during his life under the influence of religious beliefs and intuitions. Besides, we can show that his philosophy also has transcended twice. So, we will be able know how basically Mulla Sadra’s philosophy is affected by religion. After each of these stages, Mulla Sadra has faced with a new paradigm which basically differs from the previous one. It would be surprising to know that Mulla Sadra has claimed that despite these affections he has not broken philosophical rules at all. We want to know if we can testify this claim.

This article concentrates on the later Wittgenstein. The main problem is how we can apply his later philosophical thought to religion and religious belief. The result is that, according to Wittgenstein, religious beliefs are not such as scientific hypotheses and need not being supported by rational arguments and evidence, but they are pictures on which believers arrange and set out their forms of life. So, according to the article, Wittgenstein neither accepts nor rejects language game of religion. He just says that this form of life exists and has its limitsand prejudices. Religion, like any other conceptual schemata, logically depends on bounds and frontiers or, in better words, on social or contextual rules. If this language game is to be played and adopted, we’ll have to adopt and follow such limits and rules.

This paper considers the Allama Tabatabais Siddiqin argument from a new point of view. First, his particular philosophical foundations of the argument are clearly expressed and after that, four different versions of the Siddiqin argument are presented. In one version, we have concerned with the explanation of the argument on the basis of the broad sense of reality, while in another version, we have presented the argument as a sound one which is based on denial of metaphysical distinction between quiddity and existence in reality as well as the notions of absolute and conditioned reality in Tabatabais view. Furthermore, we have examined other versions of this argument. As a result of this inquiry, those versions which are based on the broad sense of reality and particularly on denial of metaphysical distinction between quiddity and existence in reality, because of focusing on particular philosophical foundations of Allama Tabatabai, are sound and successful, while other versions are insufficient both in interpreting Allama Tabatabais view or in representing an argument for the existence of God.

The possibility of definitive knowledge of God, as the ultimate principle of Being, is an important question of metaphysics. Mir Damad believed that God is obvious in terms of existence in itself, but as relative existence, definitive knowledge of God can be acquired through complex argument of fact. Criterion of certainty is present in the formation of this kind of argument of fact. Presentation of this argument is one of the Mir Damad’s logical innovations and, in addition to definitive knowledge of God, is useful in explaining that which kind of argument is used in first philosophy.

This article does not attempt to answer all questions against the semantics of the attributes of God, Even not going to answer that, ”what is the meaning of Omniscient/ Omnipotent/Perfectly Good? ”Rather, we want to provide with a way which shows how the properties mentioned above can be defined or judged. We assert that for the semantics of the properties of God, one has to consider the theists’ Understanding of God. On the traditional understanding of monotheistic religions, especially Islam, we can define God as the Absolute Being. The conceptual analysis of this notion leads us to the notion of God as extremely Perfect Being. By this notion, we will try to analyze properties of God. According to this notion, when a theist claims that God is Omniscient, Omnipotent and Perfectly Good, he means that God has knowledge, power and goodness in their most perfect sense. This implies that He is a Perfect Being, and His perfection can be explained only when He has this properties necessarily or simply and Immutably. To reach these results, first we will provide with an explanation of the properties ”Omniscient”, “Omnipotent” and” Perfectly Good”.According to this explanation, the main focus must be on the concept of ' absolute'. As a result, we need to know how this concept should be applied. Then, concentrating on the concept of God as the absolute and its interpretation as extremely perfect being will provide us with an analysis of this concept based on which a methodology of semantic analysis of the aforementioned properties will be determined.

Lynne Rudder Baker wants to reconcile the doctrine of resurrection in Christianity with materialism. He claims that we can present proper philosophical and theological explanation of the manner of the life after death on the basis of theory of constitution as a physical approach. Lynne Rudder Baker, Instead of philosophically explaining how mental life is related to the other-worldly body, asserts theologically that the resurrection is the miraculous act of God. One of the consequences of the theory of constitution is that numerical identity of physical and otherworldly body is not important. But it seems that it will not be possible to explain possibility of life after death, unless we take the identity of physical and other-worldly body to be granted.Because human being is composed of soul and body and they are related to each other necessarily rather than contingently. In terms of comparison, we can say that Mulla Sadra explains the identity of mundane person and the other-worldly one by the theory of the unity of soul (while accepting the variety of bodies), that is, the human soul determines the matter in every phase and, in terms of the principle of substantial motion, the corporeal and otherworldly body are two aspects of a hierarchical reality.

According to Abu-l-Hassan Al-Ash’ari, faith means acknowledgement literally, while in terms of Islamic scholars, it means acknowledging the existence of God, His prophets, and His commands and prohibitions. From his point of view, the only pillar of faith is the acknowledgement. So, the verbal confession and putting the Law in practice are considered to be secondary and excluded from the conceptual elements of faith.To explain this view point, he considers faith to be the subject to the augmentation and deficiency. Besides, he believes that faith should be based upon reason, for, according to him, the imitator’s faith is undesirable. He thinks that God creates human acts and human being merely acquires God’s created act and he is devoid of choice in its occurrence.

Mulla Sadra sees knowledge as a real relational attribute and, based on the principle of congruity, by recognizing the meaning of human knowledge and purifying it from its shortcomings, he ascribes the very meaning of human knowledge to God. It means that Divine Knowledge as well as human one is a relational attribute and thus, it calls for an object of knowledge; but the difference is that Divine knowledge rejects any kind of imperfection. Given this assertion and a couple of rules such as "the simple in nature is all things", and “The union between the intellect and the intelligible”, he presented his view on divine knowledge by the theory of “concise knowledge along with detailed discovery”. This theory has encountered many drawbacks, including: relationality of the knowledge; lack of explanation for Divine knowledge of nonbeings and impossible states of affairs and His Knowledge of details before creating creatures in detailed fashion; acceptance of the union of the knower and the known based on the presential knowledge; believing God to being all things; division of God’s essence into two stages of brief and detailed. In contrast, in “Islamic Hadiths”, the theory of “knowledge without object of knowing” has been proposed. The priority of this theory pertains to rejecting the idea that knowledge is always relational. An important consequence of this view is that knowledge will not necessarily have an object of knowing. This idea could have a vast influence on the debate on Divine knowledge.