Journal of Philosophical Investigations in Scopus
Year:2016 | Volume:10 | Issue:18 |Papers Count:11

The oldest pattern of sciences differentiation is owned by Aristotle, which promoted by Muslim philosophers. But over time, its inefficiency became evident for Muslim scholars, especially Usulis, theologians, logicians and etc. As far as Khorasani, offered pattern of differentiation based on the purpose of creation; and Isfahani and Khomeini raised pattern of differentiation based on the relevance theorems. But each of these exclusivistic models were flawed, and this led to combine models proposed. It also, by revealing weaknesses, replaced by pattern of differentiation based on agreement. They believe that science is a collection of different issues and all things that are valid in the sight of the wises, are involved in this unity and differentiation and may be considered, like the time to learn science, the aesthetics, community needs, historical preferences and etc.

Masson Oursel is mainly known as the father of the comparative philosophy. Inspired by two streams, i. e. historicism and positivism, he tried to make philosophies, as the historical phenomena, to have some dialogue with each other within the positivistic tradition. As a result of the successfulness of the comparative method in such field as philology, Oursel believed that if the models of thought in different civilizations are studied comparatively, our knowledge of what we call philosophy would be developed and clarified. His study has been focused on three civilizations: Indian, Chinese and Western; since he regarded their history and theosophical richness as an inseparable part of the perennial philosophy of the universe. By invoking the comparative method, Oursel, in his comparative philosophy, tries to make philosophy relieved from both dogmatism and relativism in their absolute face. In order to do so, he focuses on philosophical facts with regard to their historical contexts. Comparison, for him, is a channel through which philosophy can be relieved from theoretical and metaphysical absolutism and moved towards practice and applicability. The present paper tries to describe Oursel's view on comparative philosophy.

The Explanation of the De Anima of Aristotle is the most important issue for Scholastic Philosophers. Averroes as the Commentator of Aristotle, explains De Anima of Aristotle in three works: Short Commentary, Middle Commentary and Long Commentary on de Anima. The latter contains the latest and most perfect of Averroes view about material intellect. He is trying to present a coherent explain about human knowledge that is vague in Aristotle philosophy. For Averroes this faculty must be the identical receptive of external forms and before its thinking, not anyone of them. According to Averroes this intellect is one and shared for all, thae is, Material Intellect provides the one and shared knowledge for men. In this article we will investigate the point of Averroes in his explanations of Aristotle, particularly in Long Commentary on de anima.

Moral luck is an important issue in meta- ethics. Due to its conflict to the control principle, to moral assessment, and to moral judgment and moral responsibility, it is a challenging issue. Bernard Williams is the first philosopher who uses the expression "moral luck" and tries to show that the contradiction between "moral" and "luck" is not so serious. Against Kantian's idea and also our intuitions, Williams doesn't believe that morality is immune of luck and that unlike other values, is accessible to all people. If moral value is accessible to all, according to his idea, it should be not only immune of luck but also supreme. Giving some examples, Williams by concepts like justification, regret and retrospective, shows that morality hasn't these characteristics. Dividing moral luck into four types: resultant, circumstantial, constitutive and causal, Thomas Nagel puts Williams' moral luck under the first type and criticizes it. This study seeks to explain Bernard Williams' viewpoint on moral luck. At first, it clears types of moral luck, the control principle and its contradiction with moral luck, then after explaining Williams' account of moral luck criticizes it. Nagel's criticisms and others show that although they accept the existence of moral luck and also their account is compatible to williams’ but they deny williams' success in defending of this phenomenon. Finally, despite of all critiques, it seems that Williams' failure in defense of moral luck didn't decrease the importance of this matter, but made some stronger ideas were appeared by Thomas Nagel in this regard.

Establishing an efficient moral discipline depends on the accurate and comprehensive recognition of the human nature as the morality subject. In fact, the necessary precondition of founding a moral system depends on; what we are considering the human and his nature, if know him as a wicked creature by nature, or treating him as an existence to which belongs both sensible and rational, which in each realm appears an aspect of his nature.Human, for Kant, is not a mono- dimension of being, but it is a citizen of both sensible and rational worlds. Human, based on his rational nature, is good, and is bad based on his sensible nature. So, in Groundwork of the metaphysics of moral, he emphasizes that now because the world of understanding contains the ground of the world of sense and so too of its laws, we must suppose that in our capacity as members of the World of understanding, we give laws to ourselves as members of the World of sense. And this is what gives us obligations.The necessity of founding the morality on anthropology- which in Kant's viewpoint is an empirical science methodologically-on the one hand, and the possibility of establishing a pure moral philosophy which is quite free of any empirical element, on the other hand, has led some interpreters to doubt whether Kant has really been able to found such a moral system Therefore, here, in order to reveal the purity of Kant's moral philosophy, and also, to detect the way it is based on anthropology, we are going to study the relation of Kant's anthropology and his ethics.

The question of the "meaning of life" and its answer, is one of the most important concerns of human beings. Some argue that research of the meaning of life in fact is the study of the "end" or "purpose" of life. In this article, we attempt to examine the meaning of life from the viewpoint of Plato. Plato's Philosophy is a type of life philosophy and life's meaning is discovered by a philosophy based on the "absolute truth". According to Plato, human life is a purposeful process that its end is the "Form of the Good". The process is implied the knowledge and love of the Good along with acquisition of virtues. The "Form of the Good" is as the king of the intelligible world, and it is absolute goodness and beauty that its attainment is the end of "philosophia": philosophical life is the best way for attaining the Good. Due to the Plato's teleological view of life and position of the Form of the Good in his philosophical system, it is appropriate to ascribe to him a supernaturalistic point of view of the meaning of life.

Human life, contrary to other beings, has different vertical and horizontal spheres. Muslim philosophers, traditionally using different sources such as those adopted from Greek philosophers, their contemplation on the Islamic sources, and their own philosophical innovations, introduced a special viewpoint about the vertical spheres of life and it's relation to the human perfection. Mulla Sadra as one of the most outstanding Muslim philosophers using his own philosophical bases such as primacy and gradation of being and trans-substantial motion, represents a profound explication of the vertical spheres of human life and identifies these spheres of life with vertical gradation of the existential perfection. He calls these vertical spheres sensible, imaginal and intelligible world. Although Mulla Sadra has been able to give a philosophical explication of the role of vertical spheres of human life in the pass of human perfection, according to his philosophical bases, one cannot make a plausible explication about the role of horizontal spheres of life in the existential perfection of human being.

In Heidegger's philosophy, the problem of "will" is crucially significant. Indeed, this problem can be traced from Being and Time to Heidegger's later works. It seems that despite Heidegger's criticism of subjectivism and representational thinking, which are different names for will, he couldn't stay away from will absolutely until invoking the complicated term "Gelassenheit". Prior to invoking this term, Heidegger's philosophy is not utterly devoid of "will" and one might find it in decisions of Dasein (Being and Time) or as a transcendental will in 1928-1929 works which makes every will possible. After these two periods, Heidegger's alliance with National Socialism leads his thought to developing a political voluntarism, in which every individual must sacrifice his will in favor of will of the Volk. After these three periods, Heidegger's confrontation with Neitzsche leads him to turn away from the will. Nietzsche as a thinker in "the end of metaphysics" and whom his philosophy is the culmination of this issue, shows him that Being in modern epochs has been revealed as "will" and eventually as the technological "will to will". If Nietzsche characterizes the problem for Heidegger, it was Eckhart that suggests him a starting point for the solution. This article attempts to elucidate these issues: what is the "domain of the will", relation between Gelassenheit and action/passivity, relation between the will and "question of the Being", and finally Heidegger’s relation to Eckhart's Christian mysticism.

Paul Tillich is one of the most influential Christian philosophers and theologians in the twentieth century. His new theory about speaking of God is known as the theory of symbolism. He shows in this theory that we cannot speak of God literally because religious language is the language of symbols. Tillich established his symbolism theory on his ontological assumptions. According to them, although God as a being-itself and transcendent being is different from any human, but the human participates in existence with God. This assumption requires using of religious symbols in speaking of God. For assert this view, Tillich shows at the first the properties of symbols and then defines the religious symbols. Finally he argues that religious symbols have two features that face us with two different aspects, because with using these symbols we can introduce God as being itself and the wholly other on the one hand, and we can contact with him personally on the other hand.

Robert Audi, well- known American epistemologist, has a distinctive approach toward the rationality of faith which is worth studying. Audi, differentiating non-doxastic propositional faith (NDPF) from other kinds of faith which is irreducible to just a propositional belief (PB), and by distinguishing rationality from justification, tries to make it clear that the rationality pertaining to NDPF differs from the epistemological one pertaining to PB. The big part of Audi's work has dedicated to redefine the conception of faith and rationality, which both criticized. For instance, some Audi's specifications for describing NDPF are somehow ambiguous. It seems, moreover, that there is no propositional attitude satisfying all of the specifications. Furthermore, NDPF is different from the faith accepted by religions and devoted religious people. Considering these and other challenges Audi’s theory faces, it seems he is not highly successful in his theory.