THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL RESEARCH (AFAGHE HEKMAT)
Year:2012 | Volume:1 | Issue:2|Papers Count:7

Intellectual perception, imaginative perception and sensuous perception are three parts of human cognition. Mulla Sadra believes that these perceptions are obtained by natural transformation of the self and its progression through the higher degrees of existence and its union with the active intellect or Plato’s ideal forms. This would be realized either by observing the forms in the active intellect or through the reflection of forms in the self. Mulla Sadra agrees with the latter suggestion. This article tries to survey the concept of intellectual perception and its characteristics and nature from the viewpoint of Mulla Sadra.

The first and main preoccupation of St. Augustine, like other Christian philosophers of medieval ages, is religion not philosophizing. It is clear that the central part of religion is faith in God not acquiring a rational cognition, however, every pious should try to obtain a rational cognition in order to defence his own faith.Augustine, like Neo-Platonists, believes that the recognition of God is beyond the men’s abilities, nevertheless, since “God created man in his own image” (Genesis 1: 26) self-understanding is the best way for obtaining His recognition. Perceptual recognition is the first step for self-understanding and going towards imagination and memory are the next steps. This article tries to clarify the place of perceptual recognition, imagination, memory, forgetfulness and remembrance in the St. Augustine’s theory of recognition.It studies the influence of Plato and Neo-Platonists in Augustine’s thought and also surveys his own innovations.

In comparison to existence-based and cognition-based philosophy, contemporary philosophy, especially analytical philosophy, is known as language-based philosophy. However we can trace the origins of philosophical views on language to the early history of philosophy. The first serious philosophical reflection on language could be found in Socratic dialogues, especially in Cratylus. In this dialogue Plato, by adopting etymological approach particularly based on his own theory of forms, criticizes the two main views on language and reality, i.e. the views based on extremist naturism and extremist conventionalism. Cratylus argues that the names of things always indicate the nature of the things, Plato rejects this idea and believes that it is not a linguistic way but it goes beyond that. This way is completely different from the Wittgenstein’s proposition: “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world”.

Undoubtedly the concept of God is the most important and the most controversial concepts of man’s history which has engaged man’s– especially the philosophers’– attention for long. In divine philosophy of Plato that aims at reaching to a divine and imperceptible principle- one who is absolute in essence– the concept of God has been expressed by different terms in several treatises. In Plato’s philosophy God is called by different titles such as: the Good or Good Idea, placed at the top of the ideal forms, is the cause of every beings and the origin of reality and knowledge; the One which is the most complete and the best form; and the Beauty which is absolute, eternal and self-existent. All these titles are the same and identical in essence. Plato also talks about Demiurge and calls him the Fashioner, not the Creator. Demiurge changed the world from the state of Chaos into the Cosmos. This article tries to study the concept of God from Plato’s viewpoint.

Debate over an independent philosophical field under the title of Metaphilosophy is rather a new one and has particularly begun with Kant’s serious reflections on the cognitional nature of philosophy and by the 1960s reaches its climax as a serious issue. However, from the outset of philosophical thinking in Greece– although sporadically – debate over the nature of philosophy and its subject, method and end has been one of the important issue s of philosophy. Aristotle, as will be discussed in this article, on several occasions reflects on the nature of philosophy and enumerates its main subjects such as “being as being” and “separate substance”. Afterwards, Avicenna elaborately explained this issue in the first essay of Kitab Al-Shifa, especially in the first two chapters of it. He elaborates it, on the one hand, by a negative approach and discusses things which are not the subjects of philosophy but are its problems, such as God and the Cause of causes, and on the other hand, by an affirmative approach discusses the subjects of philosophy, such as “being as being” and “separate substance”. This article tries to survey Avicenna’s views on the subject of philosophy and its relation with separate substance, physics and mathematics. In fact, it criticizes the Avicenna’s Metaphilosophy of Kitab Al-Shifa.

Allameh Tabatabai’s theory of fictions is similar to the non-cognitivist theory in meta-ethics, since both of them deal with non-declarative sentences.However Tabatabai disagrees with non-cognitivists’ statement, that non-declarative sentences are meaningless. In non-cognitivist theory ethical sentences and emotional expressions are the same; in fact, ethical sentences are not the rational consequence of emotions or meanings that indicate emotions. But according to Tabatabai’s theory of fictions, fictitious perceptions and talking of good and evil are affected by our motivations and needs and are not identical with them. Since Tabatabai believes that perceptions and meanings are the fruits of inner elements, he is very close to sentimentalists. However, for sentimentalists ethical sentences are relative propositions. They believe that good and evil are the results of unruly and changeable emotions of human beings. On the other hand, non-cognitivists consider material nature and experience as the criteria for measuring ethical statements; therefore, they could not get rid of relativism. But Tabatabai, considering the divine disposition of man which could bring bliss for human beings, talks about fixed and unchanging values which are constant in origin and rooted in human nature. Therefore, Tabatabai’s theory of fictions, which is rooted in rich Islamic culture and tradition and resulted from the teachings of Quran, consists of firm logical principles and never falls into the trap of relativism.

To understand the nature of corporeal substance and its definition is one of the most fundamental issues of philosophy which has drawn Muslim philosophers’ attention to itself. Avicenna, as one of the greatest Peripatetic philosophers, analyzes the well-known definition of body– according to the philosophical and logical principles of Peripatetics– and brings a new definition. However, Shahab al-Din Suhravardi criticizes the Peripatetics’ view and suggests another definition which is basically different from that of Avicenna and other Peripatetics. This article analyzes the view of Peripatetics and gives an account of Mulla Sadra’s view on the theory of Shaikh Ishraq. Finally it compares the success and achievement of these theories.