Sophia Perennis
Year:2010 | Volume:7 | Issue:4|Papers Count:7

Shihab al- Din al-Suhrawardi (d.1194), in his most important book, Hikmat al-Ishraq, claims that he has simplified the Aristotelian theory of syllogisms by reducing its many rules to a few by which the validity of all moods can be proven. This is done by reducing all negative and particular categorical propositions to universal affirmative propositions and introducing two meta-language rules, one for the second and the other for the third figure. This is an exposition of the non-modal part of his syllogism and an examination of his claim to simplifying the Aristotelian theory of syllogism.

In this paper, I focus on the political aspects of philosophy of Illumination that played a crucial role in the Iranian intellectual history. Before Suhrawardi, the theory of philosopher-king was the common political doctrine of Muslim peripatetic philosophers (especially Farabi), but, Suhrawardi, posed the necessity of the Pole’s government for the first time (he’s the mystic “Qotb” or the perfect human being). This political theory is based on the ontological or metaphysical foundations explained in detail in the Suhrawardi’s “Science of light” (‘ilm- ulanwar) and as Henry Corbin (1903-1979) mentioned, the Imaginal World is the most important element of this philosophical system. In this paper I will explain the relationship between the Imaginal World (as an ontological area between the intelligible world and the sensible one) and the political idealism in the philosophy of Illumination. Discussing the basis of political idealism, the present paper aims to show that the Illuminations Ideal Politics implies the realization of “divine kingdom” and therefore, the ideal ruler must be connected to the Imaginal World that provides a perfect model for ontological coherency of the whole Cosmos.

Traditionally, it has been thought that according to Avicenna's view of the soul, the origination of the soul is, in some sense, (with or) after the origination of human body. In this paper I will argue against this interpretation of Avicenna. In the first section, a short review of the Peripatetic philosophy of the soul will be given. In the following section, I will explain a significant problem for the Peripatetic view of the soul.In the ending section, I will try to provide an alternative reading of Avicenna's view on the origination of the soul.

“Art is essentially form”, says Titus Burckhardt. This assertion concerns more particularly religious art which, to be called so, must have, according to the same author, not only a religious subject but also an adequate religious form. That is why, regarding religious art, there is an indefeasible relationship between form and meaning or form and subject. So, one can determine the religious character of a given kind of art by taking into account this relationship.In this article, we try to explain the place of form in religious art, then we envisage the crisis of the form in religious art in contemporary Iran.

Suhrawardi believes that among the quantified propositions, the negatives, as well as affirmatives, commit to existence of the subject; so, the negatives can be reduced to affirmatives and collapse the number of the logical rules and syllogisms. We name the Theory as “Batti Affirmation”. Unlike the theory of“Battatah Necessity” which reduces the possible propositions to necessary ones, the theory of “Batti Affirmation” is not firm enough; for neither are its alleged reasons convincing, nor its consequences acceptable. Four reasons can be gained from Suhravardi’s text: 1. the subject of negative proposition is affirmative, so by“Far‘iyyah Rule”, it implies its existence; the reason is acceptable only if the relation between the subject and the predicate is conjunctive and not conditional.2. The parts of a proposition can be regarded as parts of its predicate, and negation is a part of the negative propositions. The reason suffers from the false major.3. A necessary negation is the same as an affirmation of impossibility; 4. Affirmation and negation in possible propositions are the same. The last two reasons confuse the negation of modality and the modality of negation. So much the incorrectness of the reasons; as about the incorrect consequences of “Batti Affirmation” I can mention its inconsistency with some doubtless logical rules such as contradiction among quantified propositions.

Qunawi in one of his treatises (’l-risalat ’l-mufsahat ‘an muntaha ’l-’fkar wa sabab ikhtilaf ’l-’umam) and some other places has considered the issue of disagreement of people on their beliefs and religions and its possible causes. Although he begins his analysis with an epistemological explanation of such a disagreement and introduces factors like diversity of interpretations or different arguments for and against systems of beliefs as its causes, he does not stop at this level. He proceeds to see the ontological differences as the bases of epistemological ones. He takes the following route: people's disagreement on their beliefs is a result of their different attentions, and their different attentions is a result of their difference in purposes and goals, while the latter itself is a result of difference in people' s tempers, manners, mentalities and various interactions between their souls and bodies. Interestingly, according to Qunawi, the last mentioned difference is a result of various effects of the manifestation of God's names on human receptacles which is in turn relevant to variety of their capacities. Consequently, Qunawi sees disagreement among people with regard to a single subject matter as a natural phenomenon at the level of the speculative reason. This means that disagreement about religious beliefs is an inevitable effect of God's names manifestation.

Risalat Fi Al-Arzagh is one of the Avicenna’s treatises which have been attributed to him in all Avicenna’s bibliographies. About twenty copies of this treatise have been identified and there is no doubt in the authenticity of attributing it to him.In the manuscripts marked by ص and ث, the treatise has been named by Risalat Fi Al-Arzagh; this title basically is derived from its topic related to the discussion of Arzagh. However, in the manuscript م, the treatise has been called Risalat Fi Al-Lutf Al-Khafiwhich has come from the first expression of the treatise as follows: “Several people who were not able to view the hidden aspect of subtitle Divine Wisdom…” the treatise also has been namedTaghdir Al-Arzagh and Risalat Fi Vujud Al-‘adl Fi Al-Makhlughat. In any case, it is obvious that treatise title is not Avicenna’s one.Regarding motive for composing the treatise, it is described in the manuscript  صas the report of a conversation occurred between a theologian and Avicenna in the treatise. However, in the manuscript ث the treatise has been considered as Avicenna’s answer to Abu Said Abelkhayr’s request. If this is correct, it should be regarded as one of the conversation topics between the philosophy and the sufi.Therefore it would be like some other conversations which have gradually been posed as an independent treatise because of the importance of subject.The content of the treatise concerns some questions on Divine Justice and its relation to the human differences in enjoying it, a topic which still is discussed by philosophers and theologians based on their type of thinking.