QARBSHENASI-YE BONYADI (OCCIDENTAL STUDIES)
Year:2011 | Volume:2 | Issue:1|Papers Count:7

Though democracy enjoys such a lofty status in the contemporary world that many people think of it as a certain and evident thing, theory of democracy and its standards have been faced by challenging critiques. The main origin of critical approach towards democracy should be sought for in the ancient Greece time. As a matter of fact, since the very beginning in the ancient time, the nature of democracy have been faced by problems and crises by which democracies in our time are faced as well. Brief rereading of some critical considerations concerning democracy in an analytic-descriptive methodology and explanation of challenges facing it are the main objective of the present article. According to the findings of the present research, cognitive interaction between equality and liberty, two conflicting dimensions of democracy, democracy puzzle, and the phenomenon of globalization are the main challenges by which the theory of democracy is faced.

Because of development of comparative linguistics in the 19th Century and ethnological findings of the 20th Century, mythology was introduced as a scientific discipline, and, since ancient myths of nations are the most fundamental categories to know various nations, researchers focused on comparative mythology as a way to mutual understanding among nations. Because of this, dialogue and interaction between nations began. Thus, comparative mythology is able to remove grounds of disputes and conflicts between nations- which are mostly products of antipathy and absence of a mutual language, for, focus on cultural infrastructures may lead us to find common features among various nations, and such common features may lead to peace and friendship among them. In addition, researchers may pay attention to various climatic necessities because of differences between myths so that each and every nation may be judged under its own conditions, and such a mutual understanding may hinder enmities between nations. It should be noted that in the present article, only western views toward comparative mythology have been discussed and studies.

Existentialism is one of the philosophical schools which covers a great part of the contemporary philosophy. Existentialist philosophers reflect upon man's being in a way other than the being of other entities, and accurately label this distinction of man's being as "existence". They are seeking to show the difference between man's being or existence in this world and [being of] other entities. Inevitably, they have to research in the way and form that man is in this world as well as his states and Existential issues. Though this approach has been focus of the thinkers of that time and after it, Soren Kierkegaard, with his basically religious reflection as opposed to logical philosophy and rational principles of Hegel, may be called the founder of Existentialism, and Gabriel Marcel, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, and Jean Paul Sartre may be enlisted as its main representatives.The notable point is that philosophers of existance avoided systematization and did not provide a systematic philosophy. Though philosophical ideas in this extensive field are so diverse that it has produced some misunderstandings, because of the common way of philosophizing and their emphasis put on man instead of nature, they are classified under "Existentialist" category.

In the course of history, philosophers have witnessed many developments among which is Kant's Copernican revolution. When he emerged, views towards philosophy changed completely and a new era began in philosophy. After him, every philosopher has been somehow in interaction with this view. Though Kant was claiming that he had created a fully critical system, it seems that, even in his own system, one cannot be fully faithful to the critical methodology intended by him. Some scholars advocated attempts made to improve Kantian system so that replies might be provided for those who claimed that there were deficiencies in his philosophy among whom we may mention Reinhold and Fichte. Fichte tries to provide firm foundations for philosophy and, in this way, uproot uncertainty. In his writings such as Theory of Science, he tried to explain his own methodology and improve Kant's critical philosophy.Here, we try to discuss grounds for formation of the ideas of Fichte as one of the German philosophers and the way he faced problems in Kant's critical philosophy.

In John Locke's thought, through an active function, the mind synthesizes sensible and successive forms acquired by internal and external senses, and, makes scientific (mental) objects against external ones. In this way, it finds quidditive concepts of objects. Then, the power of understanding selects some common ideas which concern some similar object, and introduces them as essentials of such objects, and thus as their "types". According to this view, components of types are selected by us and they are, therefore, products of selection and mind's contract.On the contrary, according to Kant, the mind is merely abstracting the final and pure forms of objects or their types and genera. According to this approach, reflective judgment, in a complete action and far from a priori concepts and principles of understanding, reflects upon types of objects, and unites objects and a lot of laws of experience through abstracting types and genera. This position, according to which such universal forms are fully mental and non-cognitive and ascribed to the supersensible substrate of nature or nature in itself, is a realist one, and, it is, therefore, against Locke's contractualism, though neither Locke's contractualism nor Kant's realism is described in an extremist way. The present writing seeks to describe the opposite positions of the two philosophers concerning the mind's contribution in acquisition of types.

The Theory of Language Games is the key notion of Ludwig Wittgenstein's latter philosophy. This theory has been crafted against The Picture Theory of Language as the core of Wittgenstein’s Tractarian vision.According to The Picture Theory of Language, Language has merely one function: picturing reality. We can grasp the truth of World through grasping the truth of Language. Indeed, this latter theory is a representative of a Modern view of language. On the contrary, according to The Theory of Language Games, Language is a Multidimensional phenomenon, hence, we could never understand it from an Essentialist point of view. Indeed, Language consists of a body of different Language Games: Linguistic Functions. Each of such language games is connected with a special Form of Life. Thus conceived, understanding a language game essentially implies understanding the very Form of Life within which the language game occurs. The Theory of Language Games is a Postmodern Philosophical Standpoint of Language. And, in this article, our main goal is to analyze different aspects of this latter remark.

The present article is a short report of the most important philosophical issues of Plato concerning theory and politics. The main point concerns realization of an Ideal State which is discussed under political philosophy. At first, Plato's ideas concerning knowledge, permanence of the soul, doctrine of Ideas which is one of the most fundamental principles of Plato's philosophy, are discussed, then, issues such as justice, education, moral virtue, and the way a country should be administrated are studied. Concerning his Ideal State, Plato says: the State should be controlled by the wise people since they enjoy virtues and have succeeded to find the truth. Also, through a dialectical methodology, he tries to elevate knowledge from the level of sensible things to intelligible ones. For the same reason, he introduces an analogy which is well-known as "cave imprison". In this analogy, man makes rational limits of his knowledge, and, by education and purification of the soul, finds the absolute truth which is the same as the world of Ideas. Plato proceeds with Ideas step by step and says that philosophers have been freed from the prison of ignorance and have seen the unseen world, and since they have found the true knowledge, then they are more competent to rule.