Essays in Philosophy and Kalam
Year:2009 | Volume:- | Issue:82/2|Papers Count:8

Formalism and rationalism as two impressive trends in the cultural and social views and thoughts are much discussed in the history of Islamic thought; education is also one of such cultural categories which are influenced by these intellectual trends. The question that is set forth here is whether the Islamic formalist trend has the ability to present a thorough educational theory for religious education. To answer this question, the present article examines the impact of Islamic formalist trend in educational arena in such fields as the goals, principles, concepts, and methods  of education, and then proceeds to criticize this educational trend from the viewpoint of Islamic rationalism.

Contingency Proof is one of the oldest proofs of the existence of God, which enjoys numerous theological and philosophical expositions. What is examined in this article is the conventional form of this proof in the West, which has addressed the temporal contingency of universe and thereby demonstrated the existence of God. Its other expositions like essential contingency as well as substantial contingency, which are of special interest to Islamic philosophy, have either received no attention at all or not clearly stated. In this article, relying on the old and new scientific and theological sources of the West, the writer intends to reappraise and review this issue. Hereby, two rational proofs and two scientific arguments on its most significant premise have been presented. Its two rational proofs stress on the impossibility of actual infinite existence and the impossibility of addition to potential infinite and its transformation into actual infinite; and its two scientific arguments are adopted from the patterns of creation and thermodynamic principles. Bringing up various theories of the pros and cons among the philosophers and theologians, the article proceeds to present a critical review of the above issue.

Mac Intyre believes that the history of the western culture and thought is analyzable in two different lines, so that the modern intellect is a free and liberated and thus wandering intellect that has not found its way to a strengthened and dignified thinking, and the pre-modern intellect is a theological one intertwined with excellence and committed to tradition. The pre-modern rational thought and tradition have constantly developed within a historical dialectic; and each tradition, recognizing the defects and restrictions of its prior traditions, has sought to correct and complete them.Mac Intyre's main claim is that the way for the modern man to disengage from complicated problems lies in his returning to traditions and performing rationally oriented research, since the man who is separated from tradition and history and lacking moral excellences can not be wise, just as an individual can not enjoy moral excellences without society and intellect. In order to prove these claims, he goes on to mention historical evidences in his own philosophical analysis, which is dealt with in this article.

Islam stresses on the unity of God, and as Muslim thinkers mostly view the human being as God's vicegerent who is an object of manifestation for Divine Attributes and who enjoys Divine Image, and in one respect, regard man as a rational soul, therefore human soul (nafs)-although having various faculties-like  Almighty God, enjoys unity. Of course, numerous interpretations of this unity of soul have been presented based on particular intellectual foundations of each thinker. Ibn ‘Arabibelieves that as the Almighty God is a One that has manifested in multitudes and the multitudes represent His Oneness, human soul is also a one that is manifested in different faculties that represent his means and tools. Mulla Ṣadra views the relation between soul and faculties and its acts as similar to Unity of Divine Acts. To his opinion, human soul is all sensual, hallucinatory, imaginative, and rational faculties; and that, every one who is cognizant of the reality of being and its modes will grasp this intricate issue.

We daresay that ‘Aziz al-Din Muḥammad Nasafican be regarded as one of the greatest metaphysicians of Iran in the 7th/14th century, who is unfortunately not much known. The main feature of this mystic-philosopher of Kubraviyya school of thought is his intellectual equilibrium in a time (the most severe era of Mongol invasion) that is distinctly characterized by violence and extremism. Nasafihas expounded many philosophical concepts in his books, one of the most significant of which is the notion of human ontogenesis and basically the substantial motion, which was later on pursued by sadr al-Din Shirazi. Understanding Islamic philosophy seems to be feasible when the missing links of this chain can be restored. Nasafican be regarded as one of those links that bound mysticism to philosophy and later on had a great impact on Isfahan school of thought. This article addresses aspects of sadr al-Din Shirazi's impressionability from ‘Aziz al-Din Nasafi in concepts of substantial motion and the development courses of this thought.

Was Hume really a skeptic empiricist? The common picture that existed about Hume sometime ago outlined him as an empiricist who, contrary to his preceding empiricists, could deduce skepticism which was a corollary of empiricism from it. According to this interpretation, Hume's entire project is negation and rejection of metaphysical knowledge as well as a science based on principles of empiricism. However, in the first half of twentieth century, David Camp Smith presented a more positive interpretation of Hume. According to his interpretation, Hume's objective is not entirely negating and rejecting; rather, his prime purpose is to indicate that man's fundamental beliefs, which according to the principles of empiricism are not adoptable from experience or intellect, are originated from human nature, and, somehow, the nature imposes them on us. This analysis by Smith transforms Hume from a skeptic empiricist into a naturalist philosopher. The present paper seeks to make a brief comparison between these two interpretations on Hume.

The Zionist Jews have started widespread attempts and set up extensive propagations in countries over the world in order to attach importance to the Holocaust. They believe that the massacre of the Jews and the occurrence of the Holocaust have been carried out by Nazi Germany through killing the Jews in gas chambers and then incinerating them. Furthermore, the Jews have taken numerous measures in terms of sanctification of the Holocaust and codification of legal penalties against those who refuse to accept it as real and raise questions about it.An examination of the writings and comments of the Jewish commentators concerning the massacre of the Jews in the Second World War reveals a distinct contradiction between sanctification of the Holocaust, the massacred Jews, and their being regarded as sinful by the Jews. The Jewish commentators mainly believe that those massacred in the Second World War deserved Divine punishment for their disobedience to God and violation of Divine Law. In addition to this, some evidences indicate that if the Jews who are purported to have been imprisoned by the Germans waiting for death in gas chambers wanted to be released from their captivity, the Jews who claimed respect for those Jews and brought up legal guarantees for preserving their sanctity, not only did nothing to release them, but they may have impeded it as well. Examining the contradiction between sanctification of the massacred Jews on the one hand and regarding them as sinful and not helping their release during the Second World War on the other, is the issue addressed in this article.