PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION RESEARCH (NAMAH-I HIKMAT)
Year:2004 | Volume:2 | Issue:4|Papers Count:10

Shaykh Najm al-din Kubra (d. 618 H.) is one of the influential thinkers in erea of speculative mysticism. His reflections include anthropology, philosophy of mind and theory of knowledge. He discussed, amony other issues, the significance of various types of dreams and visions; the different classes of conceptions and images, ie, Luminous and dark, (Khawatir) that engage the mystic’s attention. Then, he dealt with higher type of khawatir. Divine inspiration, and presented a complete theory of recollection. In his view, man needs senses and reason for his worldly life, but he never attains knowledge concerning world realities, except by self- exertion. He believed in a great truth in the luminous world as a “macroreason” which can be perceived only by means of individual human reason or “microreason”. The concepts of “absence” (ghibat) and taste (dhawq) are ones that play a important role in Najm al-din’s theory of knowledge.

Borrowing the conceptn of “seeing as” from Wittgenstein and Kant’s distinction between nomenon and phenomenon, Jhon Hick distinguishes between “reality in itself” and “reality for perceiver”. Reality in itself is God in real world and reality for perceiver is the very image that every religion offers of God. This distinction is the most important epistemological foundation of Hick’s theory of religious pluralism. It seems that the theory of perception and theory of justification in Hick’s theory of religious pluralism are vague.

Hermeneutics is divided into general, particular and philosophical. Schleiermacher and Dilthey uphold general hermeneutics and Heidegger and Gadamer endorse philosophical one. Scheiermacher and Dilthey are in search of general methods for understanding texts, but analyzing the nature of understanding engage Heidegger and Gadamer’s attentions. Gadamer’s “Truth and Method” is a influential book in philosophical hermeneutics. Cirticizing past thinkers, Gadamer views contronting texts, not method, as means of Understanding. For Gadamer conditions of understanding have highly importance. In his view, such factors as historicity, language, prejudices and dialogue with text make understanding text possible. In this essay , in addition to examine these factors , pointed out that Gadamer’s thought entails a sort of relativity in understanding text and of limitedness of humen knowledge.

This article is divided into two parts. In the first philosophical analysis is discussed from view-point of western philosophers. They present three type of philosophical analysis: Decompositional analysis, Regressive analysis and Interpretational analysis. decopositional analysis is a method of investigation of the sort that based on exploration of one hole-like conceptional ones-so that to pay attention to its parts and the way of its combination make the attestation of the proposition it included possible. Regressive analysis is the examination of the all (near and far) premises of one combined arguments that finally leads to confirmation of given proposition. Interpretational analysis is the interpretation of one or more propositions or concepts, by means of which the truth of given proposition can be shown. In the second part, it is pointed out that Muslim philosophers have used of these three types of analysis.

In this essay, the problem of objectivity is examined. Form view-point of such philosophers as Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, Bacon, Locke, Berkeley and kant. The problem of objectivity is divided into three ones: epistemological, metaphysical and semantical. Then, consensus, indexical, representative and correspondence theories is dealth with. Finally, types of metaphysical and semantical objectivity are discussed.

In this essay, after short explanation, the effects of Godel’s first and second incompleteness theorems on philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of mind and against materialism and positivism is examined. The effect of Godel’s theorems on philosophy of mathematics has examined in three fields of logicism, formalism and nature of proof. In the area of philosophy of mind , the effect of Godel’s theorems on antimechanist proofs is pointed out.

The unity of being is one the most important doctrines of mystics that provoked many challenges in area of religious belief and philosophy. Mulla sadra as a founder of philosophical system called transcendental philosophy claims that he has much success in explaining this mystical doctrine. But his followers disagreed over his meaning. Some of them claimed that the theory of equivocal unity of being was the only rational explanation of mystic’s doctrine of unity of being. Other claimed that mystic’s doctrine means the individual unity of being that negates plurality of beings. In this essay, after brief indication of history and development of mystic’s doctrine, different interpretations of Mulla sadra view concerning this doctorine are examined. semantical examination is used to show which interpretation is defensible.

One of the criteria of distinction between sciences is their objects. Philosophers also have distinguished theology from other sciences on the basis of its object. Ibn Sina in shefa illahyat has vastly dealt with this discussion. In this essay, the meaning that Ibn Sina has had in mind of the object of theology is elicited from his magnum opus, sheaf, by method of semantics. This classifies meaning-shifts and omits obscurities.

In this essay it first point out the history of critical philosophy of history, then examin three main problems of critical philosophy of history. The first is the kind of explanation that is required or acceptable in historical studies. The second is the extent to which historical reasoning should be, or can be, value–free, in view of the structural role that value judgments often appear to play in historical accounts. The third is the kinds of case that can be make for narrative as a way expressing historical conclusions. The last section of this essay is the contributions of philosophers to historians.