STRATEGY FOR CULTURE
Year:2015 | Volume:7 | Issue:28 |Papers Count:7

Comparison between philosophers and philosophical systems has been there since the beginning of the history of philosophy until our time, as Farabi in his book, Al-Jam’ Bayn Rai’ al-Hakimayn, somehow has comparatively studied the viewpoints of Plato and Aristotle. Nevertheless, it was Paul-Masson Oursel, who in the early twentieth century, through a historical approach, focusing on Western thought, launched an integrated methodological discussion of this issue in his book, Comparative Philosophy (1931), and comparatively studied philosophical viewpoints and idea. The present paper, while reflecting on the nature, possibility, conditions and objectives of comparative philosophy, is an attempt to study the intellectual and cultural backgrounds of the idea of comparative philosophy and condition and pathology of its teaching and research in contemporary Iran. Also in a positive step, attempts have been made to introduce and analyze three models of comparative philosophy in contemporary era – that is, the comparative approaches of É tienne Gilson, Henry Corbin and Toshihiko Izutsu in the light of their comparative works – which underline the possibilities and limitations of comparative philosophy with regard to the tradition of Islamic philosophy. Reflecting on the pivotal status of Kant in the history of Western philosophy and significance of paying attention to it in comparative philosophical studies constitute the concluding part of this paper.

Indigenization of social sciences is one of the important issues in scientific development in the Third World countries which has close relations with the developments in the field of modern sociology of science. The main objective of the present paper is to demonstrate that normal science can lead to indigenization of social sciences. For this purpose, in the first place two approaches, i. e. positivist and critical (historicist) to social sciences were explained and their viewpoints about the necessity of indigenization of social sciences were discussed. It was found that contrary to the first approach, the second approach considers indigenization of social sciences a fundamental necessity. In the next step, the conceptual framework of the research, i. e. Thomas Cohen’ s theory of scientific revolutions was explained briefly to shed light on the status and meaning of the gradual and revolutionary scientific changes and normal science in scientific research in Cohen’ s perspective. Then, by alluding to the five fundamental dimensions of research in social sciences – that is, selection of the subject, selection of research method, exploration, description and explanation – indigenization was discussed in each dimension in positivist and critical approaches. The findings indicate that despite fundamental theoretical differences between the two paradigms, when the advocates of the two approaches practically engage in a serious research, the outcome of their activities are indigenization of social sciences. Therefore, what is important is that the researchers, who follow any of the two approaches, engage in serious, precise critical research and go through all stages of the process of research from selection of the subject to explanation and criticism of theory.

Multifaceted studies of different levels and aspects of domestic typological studies of religiosity indicate that these studies lack a comprehensive and logical model for typological study of religiosity. This lack of model and framework, has caused the previous studies suffer from several disarrays and serious defects. In order to prove this contention, it is necessary to review and critically study the typological studies of religiosity in order to attain a model for future typological studies of religiosity. The findings of the present critical study and research indicate that the shortcomings of the previous studies include the followings: lack of proper definition of concepts, lack of allusion to the method, subject and criterion for typology, lack of illustration of the path of study and finally lack of logic in these typological studies. Through offering a “ background map” of typological studies of religiosity, the present paper has presented some solutions for removal of the said shortcomings and finally has proposed a framework for typological study of religiosity.

The current of Islamic Revolution and its consequent developments led to the formation of a kind of behavior, culture and organizational management model that was later interpreted as jihadi work and management. Evidently, inattention to the original essence and vital factor of jihadi thought would lead to diversion or misconception. The objective of this research is to understand the essence of this emerging phenomenon and its fundamental differences with similar phenomena. Hence, employing interpretative phenomenology, the present paper is an attempt to study and analyze more than 60 statements of Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei about jihad (holy struggle). The findings of this research indicate that the pivotal distinction of jihadi activities become meaningful in the framework of faith in the invisible and acquisition of this faith as well as its bolstering is possible through piety. The effectiveness of jihadi management is rooted in individual’ s mystical and spiritual spirit; and, finally the nature of jihadi management is defined on the basis of struggle, which is founded on two pillars, i. e. ample efforts; and struggling against the obstacles in the way of achieving Islamic progress and civilization. Proper understanding of the nature of jihdi management can lead to the formation of jihadi culture with such dimensions as utilization of the capacities, struggle against the obstacles and limitations as well as introduction of examples and epitomes. Success in launching this model of management would lead to such results as happiness and hope in the organization, quicker access to the goal, strengthening of the inner construct, experiencing dignity and achieving progress and civilization.

One of the important aspects of social systems, which is important in directing and identifying them, is their objectives and consequently the indexes for evaluation of their performance. Attempts have been made in this study to infer evaluation indexes from sources such as Nahj al-Balaghah and Gorar ul Hekam wa Durar ul-Kalem through content analysis and on the basis of structural-interpretative modeling, their connection with each other has been explained and classified. The statistical population of this study included 15 experts of religious sources and sampling was done through theoretical method. The findings of the research indicate that the objectives of social systems can be divided into two broad categories, i. e. positive and negative. The positive objectives of social system include raising of human beings and proximity to God; and the negative objectives include alleviation of poverty, removal of oppression, removal of fear, removal of obstacles to freewill, removal of dependency, removal of abjection, removal of ignorance, and removal of devastation. These two categories of objectives have inseparable ties with each other.

Religious faith as a generalized set of beliefs, Ought-To’ s and Ought-Not-To’ s and values are among the most effective psychological supports, which can give meaning to moments of life and under certain circumstances can provide a explanatory supports to rescue human beings from suspension and meaninglessness or tendency towards abnormal behaviors. The main objective of the present research was to determine the impact of religious orientation and methods of coping on addiction vulnerability among the students of Tabriz University. The sample consisted of 383 students who were selected through random sampling method from the faculties of Electricity, Chemistry, Humanities and Social Sciences. The necessary data were collected by using the following scales: The Age-Universal’ I-E Scale, The Brief RCOPE and Addiction Vulnerability Scale. Path analysis was used to analyze the data. The findings of the research indicate that there is a significant positive relationship between direct positive religious coping, intrinsic religious orientation, personal extrinsic religious orientation, and negative religious coping with addiction vulnerability among students. The findings also showed that 33% of the variance of addiction vulnerability was accounted by linear combination of intrinsic religiosity, personal extrinsic religious orientation, social extrinsic religious orientation and negative and positive religious coping.

Alienation is isolation from a group or an activity, while in a normal situation an individual is expected to feel solidarity with that group or engage in that activity. Academic alienation causes students to have the least participation in the organizational processes, which leads to their deprivation and isolation from the group of learners in today’ s knowledge-based society. The objective of the present paper is to study the relationship between university organizational culture and academic alienation taking into account the meditational role of mastery goals in the form of causal model. The goals of progress theory states that the more environmental factors such as organizational culture support the freedom of action of an individual, the more the individual would form his/her mastery goals and would experience lower degree of alienation. In order to test the theoretical model, the structural equation modeling method was employed to select 357 master’ s program students of Tabriz University through cluster sampling method. Geert Hofstede’ s Cultural Dimensions, Academic Alienation and Mastery Goals Questionnaires were used for the collection of data. The results of the theoretical test indicate that the mastery goals have negative impacts on academic alienation. The dimensions of organizational culture (uncertainty avoidance, collectivism and power distance) too have negative impacts on mastery goals. But the impact of masculinity is not significant. Overall, the findings of the present paper indicate that if the university organizational culture supports the students’ freedom (self-determination), they would experience a lower degree of academic alienation.