ENSANPAJOOHI-E DINI (RELIGIOUS ANTHROPOLOGY)
Year:2019 | Volume:15 | Issue:40 |Papers Count:12

One of the issues having attracted the attention of those philosophers focusing the necessities of a “ good life” is that how a belief, regardless of its correspondence to reality, affects one`s life. This issue has been assumed of greater importance in the case of those beliefs whose falsity and truth may not be easily perceieved. The paper views creating a life making sense only from this aspect. If we believe in a life making sense, depending on the factors which gives meaning to life, we will think of diverse consequences of this meaningfulness. The present study investigates the effect of human life`s taking meaning in the method of Allamah-i. e. through holding communication with God – from different perspectives and provides for comparing any positive effect of the methods taken by others. Such a communication is accompanied by a look toward world and human which answers the fundamental questions of human life, interprets sufferings and pains as groundwork of mental growth and sees death as an entrance to the eternal life and then leads human beings to encounter life responsibly and seriously; in this way, not becoming sorrowful and joyful of what missed and what attained respectively, one may arrive at mental peace and satisfaction. In addition, such a view brings about an indescribable bilateral love from which a joyful state originates. In the path toward absolute perfection, feeling love to others as the Divine manifestations would support one in the way.

Fakhr Razi has presented a religious view about human ontology by analyzing Quranic verse. Some of his ontological principles may be referred to as: man is the most noble creature on the Earth; the essence of man is an immaterial soul which undergoes gradual changes in properties; human soul from the beginning enjoys some God-given inclinations and predispositions which may lead to the actualization of good or evil qualities; human life has three stages: before birth, after birth and after death; man holds a fourfold relationships with God, with the self, with others and with nature of which the first must be the dominant one; considering the three stages of creation has been aimed to direct man to the origin and the end of the universe. The paper has studied Fakhr Razi`s view on anthropological qualities of human being as understood in religion with a descriptive-analytical method.

Considering the great ambiguity in the adjective “ Modern” of the expression “ modern technology” , the paper introduces and criticizes the dominant approach among scholars and critics of technology-which is an absolutist approach and holds that technology has a definite and constant nature-and then suggests a new approach, regarding modern in such a relative and applied sense that enjoys benefits of impartiality and efficiency in comparison with the absolutist one. It is worth mentioning that the threefold norms for modern quality of technology in the latter approach are acquired through anthropological bases and show that what changes and developments have been beared by modern technology, as taken it for man and near him. These distinctions have implications for thinkers in morality, psychology, sociology and anthropology to arrive at a better interpretation and understanding of modern man`s behavior and give instructions for his intricate condition to be improved.

The reasonability and purposefulness of the world’ s system is a perfectly evident issue to many of philosophers. Schopenhauer, the German philosopher of 19th century, has viewed this phenomenal world, with regard to its essence, as Will of which arises the struggle in it. Therefore, suffering would be taken as a natural consequence of volition and the will. Among Muslim philosophers, Avicenna, emphasizing Divine Knowledge and inseparability of evils from material world and regarding the wisdom and purposefulness of Divine acts, has viewed a better system than the current one as impossible. In this paper, in addition to explaining Schopenhauer`s thought on the priority of the Will to reasonability for this world, its consequences including suffering and evil as well as the solutions for them have been described. Also, such consequences as explained in Muslim philosophers` works, like those of Avicenna, have been brought to consideration.

Biology has left the greatest effectson human sciences including religious and non-religious ones by way of the theory of evolution. Lamarckism, Darwinism, Neo-Darwinism and those believe in genetic evolution such as Dawkins exhibit the turning points and progressing line of this theory. Lamarckism was abolished by biologists themselves. Some scientific and non scientific factors, however, caused Darwinism to survive in scientific communities, in spite of the oppositions by some biologists and its inherent deficiencies. The ambiguty of this theory concerning the first stage of life and attributing some changes to chance and presenting a wild behavioral model on the basis of struggle for life as well as the breach of the law even in the case of animals, are among deficiencies of this theory. Today, thanks to considerable developments in genetics, the same evolutionary belief in the form of genetic changes and mutations has been put forward by some scholars such as Dawkins. The present study, in addition to presenting a general criticism of the theory and of its inclusion of Man, has investigated the relation of the theory with the exalted position of Man in life and concluded that the theory, given its correctness, is compatible with this exalted position of Man.

Human cloning (therapeutic cloning, reproductive cloning) is one of those issues extensively investigated by researchers and being exposed to conflict of ideas. Jurists, too, have different ideas about this issue. Studying the views of jurists shows that saying absolute permission for reproductive cloning is more compatible with Imamiyeh Jurisprudence; the reason why may be relied on the absolute permission and the principle of Ibaha (permissible). However, it is worth considering that reproductive cloning, regarding the way of taking the nucleus of generic cell, is of different forms and, religiously forbidden. What agreed with in the field lies in the absolute permission for cloning during conjugal life. Besides, investigating international documents show that considering the objectives of legislation regarding preserving the primary rights of human beings, cloning is permitted, save those rare cases which it contradicts human rights. The current research used a descriptive-analytical approach to probe the issue and concluded that the permission for absolute reproductive cloning is the dominant view among jurists. Also the same is the case in international documents unless it contradicts human rights.

Duality or unity of human soul and body are among those important and challenging issues for philosophers and psychologists and, therefore, many thinkers have thought over them. Is there any real being, in addition to body called soul, spirit or mind? May these concepts be reduced to body or to brain, to function, to behavior, to structure or to other holistic properties of body? Physicalism is one of those approaches believing in the soul as being substantially reducible to the body. While non-reductive physicalism dose not view the properties and dispositions of the soul as reducible to those of the parts of the body. Contrary to physicalism, substatial dualism not only considers the attributes of the soul as not being reducible to those of the body but views the soul itself as not being reducible to it also. Dr. Murphy supports non reduvtive Physicalism and, relying on th findings of the experimental sciences, specially those of neuroscience, argues against the belief in an incorporeal substance and views its proofs as founded on intuition and, therefore, not acceptable. She takes the concept of “ top-down causation” and a holistic outlook to material aspect of man as necessary for his reality to be understood. Thus, this paper is an attempt to compare and judge between dualism and non-reductive Physicalism. What found in experimental sciences lies in full agreement with a correct interpretation of dualism. Without intuition, one may not enter into the realms of self-knowledge and anthropology. It is possible for dualism to be based upon on some philosophical argumentations of publicly understandable intuitional propositions. Provided that being explained well, the concept of top-down causation can show the dualism also.

Human perfectional development is known as an established principle in philosophy. Human soul has been known as being naturally capable of upgradation and degradation and, therefore, he/she may ascend and achieve perfection of soul through knowledge and deed or fall short of perfection and descend to inferior. This paper may be taken as an attempt to study the barriers against human perfection-seeking deeds, namely those barriers challenging human perfectional motion toward final goal and real prosperity of the proximity to God and His succession. The notability of the study lies in the fact that given one`s famililiarity with the barriers, one would refrain from the obstacles of the way and move toward perfection. In the paper, the barriers including love of temporal world, Satan and his progeny, imitation, ignorance and false beliefs, faithlessness and weakness of faith have been extracted from Mulla Sadra`s works at first and, then, the quality of their effects on human perfection analyzed.

Kabbalah is a mystical narration of the Jewish final promised in which reflects a particular understanding of creation and formation of the universe and the role of evil in its imbalance. As understood, the narration carries the idea of Divine hands` being tied up in reforming the creation. The narration, drawing the quality of the unity of being in the trine of appearance i. e. the temple (the place of light), the chosen people (sparks of light) and Messiah (the manifestation of light), has known man of a unique role in ascending curve and in descending curve both. The linkage of these three lights lays the groundwork for the descended light to return to God Himself; and for Kabbalism, this is the real meaning of appearance and reform of Human in the end of time. Such a narration is an interpretation of the 64th verse of Surah Al-Maidah in which the adopted view of Jews concerning the enchainedness of Divine Hands is stated. This paper, studying the Jewish teaching of the final promosed and human role in it, has surveyed the enchainedness of Divine hands in Judaism.

The great Prophet`s mi`raj, being of Quranic origin, has been a matter of consensus amongst Muslim. In the mysterious night of mi`raj, the Prophet was carried throughout the world of existence according to the Divine Will and watched a lot of truths in the highest world of existence and saw the positions and ranks of some people of his community in the paradise and in the hell, Then, he visited the antecedent prophets and returned from his journey. Yet, his report of the observed realities was met with the Quraysh`s denial. All Muslim thinkers have agreed on those particular prophetic perceptions in that mysterious night. Yet, they have commented and explained the how of mi`raj differently; some have known the journey to be spiritual and some corporeal. The former may be divided into some groups; one believing in its occurrence in sleep but intelligently, one believing in its occurrence being of thought and common sense and one believing in its occurrence in awakening distint from sleep or thoughtful movement. The particular explanation of some of the Gnostics, though may be taken as spiritual, because of their special manner of speech has been regarded as being distinguished from that. Each of these five interpretations presented here have their own aspects of preferences and ambiguities. This research was an attempt to uncover the preferable interpretation through adopting a critical approach. Yet, this does not invalidate the rest of non-selected interpretations.

Many scholars in the field of social thought have analyzed ideology as a system of ideas and beliefs of communities in relation to religion and culture. Investigating some of theories respecting ideology, the current research stipulates that, under the influence of structuralist and pragmatist approaches in social sciences, the definition of ideology has resulted in a functional definition of religion. The functionalist definitions are dependent on a theoretical view which tries to explain beliefs on the basis of a functional role. Therefore, ideology may be taken either as religion or as any value system with functional aspects. However, flying in the face of those approaches which mainly underline functions of religion, the symbolic cultural approach adopts an interpretative and spiritualistic method and states that each society can hold its particular cultural patterns which are possibly religious, scientific or ideological. Spiritualistic approaches, too, fail to uncover the realities of religion but they arrive at a deeper understanding of religious beliefs of peoples by discovering and interpreting the cultural patterns of societies.

Each of innate, intellectual, emotional and moral dimensions of human being has its appropriate needs. To fulfill some of these needs, man requires revelation. Analyzing names and attributes of the holy Quran sheds light on the way in which these needs are known and satisfied. In this study, the Quran`s names of zikr, hikmat and mouizah have been selected and analyzed with regard to their effects in satisfying its addressees` need. In natural dimension, man stands in need of zikr to overcome neglect and forgetfulness. In the intellectual dimension, man stands in need of wisdom to aquire the knowledge hardly attainable with regard to inherent limitations. Besides, in emotional and moral dimensions, man requires mouizah to sustain balance in decision making when excitements and inclinations affect his reason.