Philosophy and Kalam
Year:2011 | Volume:44 | Issue:1|Papers Count:7

In this essay the most important arguments of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi for the theory that all acts are created only by God (khalq al-a mal) are investigated. In the course of this investigation each of his three arguments rejecting the necessity of free will and all his thirteen arguments for proving his theory of occasional cause (kasb) are refuted. Subsequently, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi’s interpretations of the Qur’an which are under the influence of this theory are criticized. In order to accomplish this, all of the Qur’anic verses, which as a result of this theory are interpreted by him in a way incongruous with their apparent meaning, are presented. His interpretations are evaluated taking into consideration other Qur’anic verses, the apparent meaning of the verses at issue, and the circumstances of their revelation (asbab al-nuzul), and it is concluded that none of the interpretations of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi which are based on the theory of the “creation of acts” are valid.

It is widely held that although very few works by Muslim philosophers deal exclusively with art and beauty, nonetheless specific discussions on these subjects can be extracted from their works. This is certainly true in the case of Qadi Said Qummi, who gives a separate treatment of art and beauty in his commentary on the fourth chapter of the Uthulojia (The Theology of Aristotle). The essential question of this article is: what are the meanings of beauty and art in the writings of Qadi Said Qummi? This article will show that Qummi divides beauty into intellectual beauty and sensible beauty, and states that sensible beauty is the manifestation of intellectual beauty, and hence all beauty is the manifestation of the Light of Lights, i.e. the Divine Reality. Along with an emphasis on the role of conjunctive and disjunctive imagination (i.e. the levels of being which are intermediary between the material realm, and dependent on and independent of the perceiver respectively) in the creation of beauty, Qadi Said Qummi considers that art is the manifestation the artist’s conception of beauty on sensible matter. As such he considers artistic beauty to be complementary to the beauty of nature.

The purpose of this article is to present a comparative study of the views of Islamic logicians on ‘verity-propositions’ and Nelson Goodman’s ideas on law-like statements. In order to achieve this, first we describe the analyses of Islamic logician of the meaning of factual proposition and Goodman’s presentation of law-like statements. Then, using a comparative approach, we explain the points of agreement and divergence of these two viewpoints. In this way it will be shown that despite a number of foundational differences, there are many similarities, the systematic investigation of which would have great scholarly importance. These similarities include: universality and possibility of being generalized, the strengthening and confirmation of counterfactual conditionals, and the capacity to give scientific explanation and prediction. As opposed to these similarities, law-like statements are derived from induction while verity-propositions are not so derived.

God-centered theories about the meaning of life maintain that a certain relationship with God is an essential condition for life to be meaningful. Different interpretations have been proposed in regard to this theory, but the most important God-centered interpretation is the Divine purpose theory. According to this theory, fulfilling God’s purpose is the only source of the meaningfulness of life. Different criticisms have been leveled against the Divine purpose theory such as the conflict between God’s purpose and God’s morality, as well as God’s omnipotence. However, according to Thaddeus Metz, the most important objection facing this theory is its incompatibility with some of the basic assumptions of all God-centered. According to this objection, the Divine attributes-such as atemporality, immutability and simplicity, which lead to the belief that God is the only source of the meaningfulness of life, are incompatible with God’s being purposive. The aim of this article is to provide answers to this objection based on the ideas of Allamah Tabataba’i. From his point of view, the Divine goal behind the creation of the world is His Transcendent Essence. This is to say that humans traverse the levels of being towards God through their innate and voluntary motion and thereby give meaning to their lives.

There are many commentaries on light in its role as the subject matter of illuminative philosophy. According to Suhrawardi, light is a symbol of “consciousness” and “self-consciousness”. Therefore “knowledge” is the pivot of Suhrawardi’s philosophy. The fundamental issue addressed in this study is the evaluation of vision or intuition in the essential topic of Illuminationist philosophy, that is, illuminative knowledge. This article is an attempt to prove that just as Suhrawardi considers the illuminative “principle of vision” to apply to inner perceptions, he also applies the term “vision” or “intuition” (shuhud) to all levels of sensory, imaginary and rational perception, and also to intuitions of heart. The conclusion of this article is that according to Suhrawardi the reality of perception throughout the different levels of inward and outward perception is intuitive. Also, vision and mystical apprehension, on their most elevated levels, are vision and mystical apprehension of heart, constituting a higher level of knowledge than rational perception. The true illuminative knowledge finds its realization in this final stage of knowledge.

One of the debates concerning concepts of “medial motion” and “traversal motion” is the question of which of these two concepts of motion corresponds to motion in the corporeal world. In the present article we intend to employ the language of mathematics to present a model for each of these two concepts to study the above mentioned problem. As a result, medial motion represents a covering function and traversal motion represents a continuous function of motion across distance which, taking into account two different interpretation of the definitions, are either one-to-one or are constant in no sub-interval of the range. It is seen that, medial motion does not preclude sudden changes, and, because of the fact that continuity is absent in medial motion, traversal motion alone guarantees that changes in the moving body will be gradual. Consequently, the concept of motion which corresponds to motion in the external world is traversal motion.

The problem of evil, along with its three subdivisions (ethical, physical and metaphysical) is among the most challenging philosophical and theological problems. One of the most important answers which have been given to this problem from various philosophical and theological traditions from ancient times until today is to judge that evil is related to non-existence. It seems that on the basis of Allamah Tabataba’i’s innovative theory regarding conventional perceptions (idrakat-I i’tibari) one can derive a new formulation of the classic theories, which is in significant ways different from them, on the basis that evil is to be considered ‘conventional’ as the term is understood by ‘Allamah Tabataba’i. As ‘Allamah Tabataba’i understands it, all practical propositions relating to report-based or real perceptions involve the creation of human conventions for the sake of satisfying certain practical and existential needs and the inclinations arising from these. These conventions include ‘good’ and ‘bad’, and likewise, ‘good’ and ‘evil’. The crucial aspect of these conventions is that we name our concepts ‘good’ or ‘evil’ on the basis of our goals, as opposed to them having such qualities in themselves. Of course, conventional perceptions, in so far as their effects, functions, purposes, and individual or social sources are concerned are related to and based on reality. As such they are both capable of proving knowledge and are intelligible, even though they are not susceptible to demonstration and their intelligibility is of the practical variety. On the basis of the consideration of evil as conventional, it seems that this problem can find a satisfactory solution and it can be shown that the existence of evil does not contradict the existence of a universe based on a wise divine plan. Furthermore the experience of evil is also recognized in this theory as a human fact and is not completely denied as is the case with similar theories.