Journal of Philosophical Investigations in Scopus
Year:2009 | Volume:52 | Issue:210|Papers Count:7

Paul Tillich (1886-1965) is a German-American Christian theologian who suggests that language of religioli is symbolic; it means that the realm of the religion is full of religious symbols. These symbols have properties which empower them to express the religious believes and purposes. One of the symbols properties is representation; i.c. similar to signs. They refer to something beyond. But symbols (unlike signs which are arbitrary and conventional things) are grown from the collective unconscious, and participate in transcendent power and concept of the symbolic object.The religious symbols appear in different forms such as objects, persons and natural events, and only their capacity for religious situation gives them symbolic meaning. Therefore, to affirm the original of religious symbols in referring to the Transcendent. They must be negated in finite meaning.

The question of self-evident perceptions (both concepts and judgments) is among the important and effective subjects in Islamic philosophy that nowadays can be put forward as "epistemology". This question, in spite of its great importance and unique role in Islamic philosophers' epistemology, has not been discussed in detail by them. And as a result of ambiguities lied behind the criterion by which the self- evident perceptions can be distinguished from theoretical ones, once in a while the former may be misplaced by the latter and questioned, or the latter misplaced by the former and taken as axiomatic.The present paper, on the one hand, tries to explain the significance of self-evident perceptions in Islamic philosophy, and to present and assess the differentiae between them and theoretical ones, on the other. The task is undertaken by the author as follow. Firstly, he seeks to show that the self-evident data are the essence of all apodictic knowledge, so that no certain and indubitable cognition can be acquired without them. Secondly, the most principal criterion by which self- evident data can be distinguished from the other ones, among the many criteria cited in the works by Islamic thinkers, is the simplicity as to concepts and the necessary, immediate rational affirmability with no need to any other judgment or reasoning as to judgments.

"Demandingness of morality" is a new issue in moral philosophy, which, in spite of its antecedents, has seriously and independently been put forward only in the latest decades of the 20th century. This concept is often evaluated in terms of three elements: pervasiveness, overriding ness, and stringency. There are also three general approaches toward it: extremist morality, moderate morality, and minimalist morality. This paper, based on these elements, analyzes "demandingness of morality" based on these three elements, and describes the main points of the three approaches. Since moderate morality is very close to our ordinary or everyday morality, this paper, in its explanation, analysis and critique. Tries to show that what one recognizes as morality in this era might be much more lax than the real demands of morality. Our ordinary moderate morality faces up to some serious challenges, and if it does not answer them, the claim to innocence and moral behavior in this era will crumble.

As far as Schopenhauer's philosophy sees the world as representation, and deals with the way of knowing and the relation between subject and object, it is consistent with the Kant's philosophy and epistemology. Both Schopenhauer's Dissertation and the first part of his famous work The Wordas Will and Representation reflect the Kantian epistemology. Schopenhauer himself has admitted that his philosophy is based on the Kant's philosophy. In epistemology he accepts the Kant's Copernician revolution. Even though the epistemology aspect of his philosophy (The world as representation) is based on the Kant's philosophy, But he never likes thoroughly to follow Kant's philosophy. Uniting the causality with the matter, reducing the twelve categories of understanding to one category, considering time, space and causality as the forms of the principle of sufficient reason, etc. are his innovative cases versus Kantian view. Then it can be said that, he intended to go beyond the Kant's philosophy. On the other hand, Schopenhauer's philosophy is idealistic. He considers the object as the representation of the subject .But the idealistic aspect of his philosophy is considered only in the structure of the world as representation rather as will. In other words, idealism contains only the phenomenal aspect of the world. This paper tries to illustrate the epistemological and idealistic status of Schopenhauer's philosophy from the perspective of Kant's theoretical philosophy.

The present paper has been made up of three main parts. First part begins with a question on which the whole structure of the paper has been based. The question is that "whether Strawson's Descriptive Metaphysics is a doctrine or not?" It seems that some difficulties in correct understanding of Descriptive Metaphysics and the quality of its relation to Revisionary Metaphyics arise when we consider Descriptive Metaphysics as a doctrine.Investigation about this problem goes on with the question that "how does Descriptive Metaphysics describe our general conceptual structures and their interconnexion?" In the second part, we show that Strawson describes them via connective linguistic analysis. Therefore, we "through determining the nature of Strawson's analytical approach and charting it's relation to the question "how does analysis require metaphysics?" attempt to bring an evidence in order to prove our claim that "Descriptive Metaphysics is not a doctrine, but it is an analytical approach to proposed metaphysical problem’s and doctrines in every epoch and society Drawing the conclusion and proving the above - mentioned claim in the third part, we refer to some questions and ambiguities which may be distract our claim. The most important of them is the question that "if Descriptive Metaphysics is not a doctrine, why Strawson makes inquiry into structural elements and their interconnexion?" Ultimately, we complete our claim by answering that question.

One of the most fundamental questious about G. E. Moore's ethical intuitionism relates to its scope. Does Moore's ethical intuitionism only relate to the value - ethical terms and the ethical judgments or propositions containing them, or beside those terms and judgments or propositions, it relate to the obligatory ethical terms and the ethical judgments or propositions containing them? In this paper, we will try to show, by an analytic critical method, that contrary to some of Moore's interpreters/critics, the scope of Moore's ethical intuitionism never includes the obligatory ethical terms and the ethical judgments or propositions containing them, but confines to the value – ethical terms and the ethical judgments or propositions containing them. At the same time, we will try to show that among the value – ethical terms and the ethical judgments or propositions containing them, only the adjective "Good" and the ethical judgments or propositions containing the predicate "Good" are the objects of Moore's ethical intuitionism.

In this paper, after some introductory notes on "communism" and on the relation between Aristotle and Plato (in section 1), we proceed to narrate briefly Aristotle's report (section 2), and his criticism (in sections 3 and 4), of the theory of family and wealth communism in Plato's philosophy. Then, we try to have a glance on this theory as it has proposed by Plato in his Republic (section 5). At the end, we endeavor, on the core of Plato's message, to assessing Aristotle's report and criticism of the theory (section 6). In the last section, while we accept Aristotle's words in a special level, we try to clear Plato of Aristotelian accusations.