PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS
Year:2015 | Volume:10 | Issue:26|Papers Count:8

Philosophy of culture is a relatively young discipline which evolved in the early 20th century, as a reaction against the all-embracing crisis facing human life. Examining culture, as the main aspect of human existence, it aims at developing a theory for man’s cultural life, whit the help of which man can live a better life. In this paper after an introduction to the philosophy of culture and its tasks, I have examined the causes which has led to the growth of this discipline. Then having given a history of philosophy of culture, I have explained the views of two major figures in the field, namely Simmel and Cassirer, on the human culture. Finally I have mentioned some of the achievements and also future prospects of philosophy of culture.

This essay is an attempt to view deconstructed notions of “Presence” and “Absence” and to analyze readings that focus on a few paintings. The central argument of this paper has two parts. First, we explain concepts of “Presence and Absence” and “Truth in Art” in terms of Jacques Derrida. This study is based on “deconstruction”. Derrida developed a strategy called “deconstruction” in the mid-1960s. Although not purely negative, deconstruction is primarily concerned with a critique of the Western philosophical tradition. Deconstruction is generally presented to subvert, the various binary oppositions that undergird our dominant ways of thinking-presence/absence, speech/writing, and so forth. A second aspect of the negative binary oppositions is Derrida's strategy to turn over the oppositions to become the definitive meaning plural. In the second part, the four paintings of Aidin Aghdashloo (b.1319), the Iranian contemporary painter, will be analyzed through Derridian reading of deconstruction. We see here the four works of different periods of the artist's works with the topics of Identity, Oriental (Diary of Destruction), Years of Fire, Enigma III and Enigma X. Aghdashloo’s paintings, Can take a pluralistic approach, uncertainty, and ultimately eliminate the effect of the truth and turn it into a relative will. The present study attempts to investigate, how the concepts of “Presence” and “Through in Art” in opposition with “Absence” are explained in “Deconstruction” strategy and finally with this strategy how we can read some Iranian contemporary paintings. The results of this strategy are the potential of “Deconstruction” for the analysis and study of art in boarder domain.

Carl Schmitt was one of the dedicated critics of Weimar Republic and its Pluralism that criticized all socio-political transformations after French Revolution. He thought the concept of the political as a pre-requirement to the concept of government and believed that the government can be expressed only through the political. However the concept of the political is nothing but power and resolve to decide about humans and human groups relations based on friend and foe patterns. Schmitt with distinction between friend and foe performs a form of enemy- recognition and express that absolute and superior power is in recognizing the enemy. All the arguments concerning power have been in a normal state. But the main issue refers to a exceptional situation in which, the governor who has exclusive right in law and decides on the exception. This exception is like miracle that how the governor can perform miracle in exceptional situations. The governor is responsible for deciding about friend, enemy, declaring war and exception logic. In exception logic, the governor is the one who is granted by legal system the power to declare exceptional situation and thus the power to suspend the very creditability of the systems itself.

Recently, biologists and philosophers have been much attracted by an evolutionary view of knowledge, so-called evolutionary epistemology. Developing this insight, in this view is argued that our cognitive abilities are the outcome of organic evolution, and that, conversely, evolution itself may be described as a cognition process. In this article we will introduce evolutionary epistemology and some evolutionary models for development of knowledge.

Evolutionary ethics is one of the major branches of philosophy of ethics which is still the subject of many researches. There is no doubt that one of the illustrious scholars is Frans de wall who has written several books and articles in this subject matter. He is strongly influenced by Darwin and Spencer and his profound research about primates, particularly chimpanzees and booboos, suggested new perspective on human morality. Contrary to many other scholars, who maintains that morality is a matter of culture and selfishness, he contends that our behavior is other-regarding and he puts much emphasis on cooperation and also posits that morality has roots in our evolutionary history. Despite the fact that many philosophers such as Hobbes believes that humans as fundamentally asocial or even antisocial, he postulates that humans are social and good natured in essence. He also contends that there is a continuity between human morality and animal social tendencies, And the main distinction between human and animals are moral judgments and capacity of reasoning.

The main question of the present study is concerned with the quiddity of “truth” from the point of view of two prominent figures of pragmatic philosophy: Charles Peirce and William James. Therefore, in this study first a description and analysis of the issue of truth from the point of view of these two pragmatist philosophers are provided and then its principles and basics are criticized based on the views of two Islamic philosophers: Mulla Sadra and Morteza Motahari. In a nutshell, the main claims of Peirce and James in the field of epistemology are: the pursuit of the pragmatic consequences in the stage of knowledge and authenticating the practical utility instead of adapting the mental concepts to reality (external reality or fact-itself) and determining its truth criterion. They believe that the differences and similarities between the ideas and mental concepts are not determined by the mind, but they are determined by means of tangible and practical experiences. Mulla Sadra and Morteza Motahari criticized and rejected this view and believed that this approach leads to the following problems: 1. The meaninglessness of theoretical concepts. 2. Relativity in knowing and gaining of truth. 3. The elimination of rational good and badness. 4. The necessity of pluralism in doctrinal issues and radical thoughts.