RESEARCH ON METAPHYSIK
Year:2017 | Volume:52 | Issue:22 |Papers Count:8

Spontaneity is a key concept of freedom in Kant and Leibniz philosophy. Leibniz defends spontaneity as a necessary condition for freedom, and defines it generally in terms of the absence of constraint. According to Leibniz, every substance is sole cause of all of its own states thus every change that occurs in it occurs spontaneously. Two type of spontaneity in Leibniz is determined by his commentators monadic spontaneity and agent spontaneity. Kant, from the Leibnizian tradition took the idea that spontaneity is not only the inner principle of action but also characterizes the subject as a thinking substance. But Kant explains the spontaneity by introducing two kinds of spontaneity, relative and absolute. The understanding is relatively spontaneous when it refers to an object of experience that must be subsumed under categories. Reason is absolutely spontaneous in legislating, in following and in incorporating moral law but is relatively spontaneous when it is affected by the empirical and heterogeneous elements of sensible nature. The power of judgement is relatively spontaneous when it can refer only to the object of an actual experience.

Plato, the most influential of all thinkers of ancient Greece, has exerted an astonishingly powerful effect on Western civilization and culture. In particular, European Renaissance writers and poets are greatly indebted to his doctrine of love, as discussed in detail in his Symposium. John Milton, the last and one of the most illustrious figures of Renaissance Europe and England, is no way out of Plato's sphere of leaden influence: everywhere in his work there are echoes and traces of Plato. The present essay seeks first to briefly study the concept of Platonic love and then attempts to examine young Milton’s understanding of this doctrine and his practice of employing it in one of his early dramatic works, Comus, A Masque. Ultimately, the article can be best summarized by stating that Milton’s Mask play told what he had already learned about chastity and love and beauty from the Dialogues of Plato.

Metaphor theory claims that there is no any construct of reality outside of domination of a picture or image. At the bottom of any philosophical system lays an image or a picture. Analysis of thinking relates to the analysis of metaphorical aspects of that thinking. Every concept that pretends to be abstract becomes a consequence of a concrete image. The canon of philosophy no longer lays at depth but is aroused from surface. Hana Arendt is one of the most interesting and most complicated political philosopher in the 20th century. This study is going to examine the role of theater metaphor in her political philosophy. Arendt’s political philosophy is influenced by theater metaphor. This study aimed to examine this by using the works of Flydenberg and Blumenberg.

According to the dominant methodology of contemporary analytic philosophy, philosophical intuitions play evidential roles for or against philosophical theories. However, intuitions can play the supposed role successfully only if they are justified. Phenomenalism, as one of the proposed theories that aim to explain and argue for justifiedness of intuitions, claim that intuitions are justified because they have a certain phenomenal character: Intuitive contents seem to be true. Furthermore, it argues that sensory perception has similar phenomenal character, in virtue of which it is justified. This analogy confirms the justifiedness of intuitions. In this article, however, we argue that there is at least one another epistemological feature of sensory perception which is relevant to its justifiedness that is self-correction. Although sensory perception is highly self-correcting, intuitions normally resist self-correction, even in the case of further recalcitrant evidences. The disanalogy threatens phenomenalist analogy for justifiedness of intuitions.

Nietzsche takes two aspects for the origin of values. On the one hand, he is faithful to the most prominent aspect of the western thought, the thought that takes the world as a whole, and thus considers the world as the active and passive forces that bring the life into existence. In his thought, life has at its heart a kind of obligation that forces us to apply the values, and when we respect the values, the life would become valuable. This perspective to the value and valuing is in fact a pre-subjective view to the origin of values and does not let us evaluate life by something beyond it. On the other hand, by turning to the slave and master morality in his philosophy and pointing that these are masters who construct the value and valuing, he attributes another origin to values. This antinomy encounters his philosophy with a challenge that must be overcome by any accurate and coherence reading. In this article, alongside with analyzing master and slave moralities, we attempt to eliminate this antinomy and render a coherent reading of the origin of values in Nietzsche's philosophy.

In the Meno, there is a paradox (aporema) claiming that research and therefore learning are impossible. as we know something or not. If there is knowledge, we do not need to study and if there is not, we cannot search for we do not have any idea of the subject -mat ter. Plat o resolves the paradox by the t heory of Anamnesis: knowledge/learning is recollection. This theory presupposes the pre-existence of the soul and its transmigrate ion. In the Posterior Analytics Aristotle discusses the paradox and resolves it by separation of previous universal knowledge (of major premise) from particular knowledge of things. Al-Farabi in the treatise Harmonization between the opinions of Plato and Aristotle, tries to reconcile his principal views one of which is on the paradox of Meno. He relates their views from Plato's Phaedo and Aristotle's Posterior Analytics and then harmonizing them. Al-Farabi as a Muslim philosopher pays no attention to the theory of soul transmigration in the Phaedo and looks at the arguments of the immortalit y of the soul as a witness that Plat o uses in answering the problem of knowledge/learning. Because of this interpretation and his focusing on the essence of recollect ion theory, Al-Farabi eventually reconciles the recollect ion theory (of Plato) with the theories of deduction and induction (in Aristotle).

Aristotle was up to categorize fundamental types of beings. His followers and commentators, then, tried to come up with the theses of five predicables. According to this theses, all material beings share the same genus while differing in respect to their differentia. Avicenna, the great Muslim philosopher, in the light of the proposed distinct ion between existence and quiddity by Al-Farabi, built his new philosophical system. He organized philosophical problems somehow differently. Following Avicenna, traditionally some philosophical problems were discussed under the title of existence and some of them under the title of quiddity. Mulla Sadra, the founder of transcendental philosophy, however, changed the philosophical scenery radically. Although, Mulla Sadara respected pedagogical tradition of philosophical writings, his revolutionary views on this matter has not been fully explored. One of this unexplored area is the topic of five predicables. In Islamic Peripat etic tradition, the title of five predicables is being discussed under the general topic of quiddity. If the principalit y of existence is true, quiddity is not real and therefore its related problems lose their intellectual importance. In this article, first, I take a brief look at five predicable and its importance in Avicenna's. Then, I trace its evolution in transcendental philosophy. At the end, I argue that there is a tension between this doctrine and the theses of principality of existence and quiddity irrealism.