Journal of Existence and Knowledge
Year:2020 | Volume:6 | Issue:2 (12)|Papers Count:12

Kant's conception of 'culture' is largely confined to his later works in the field of history, anthropology, and teleology. But no research has so far exclusively analysis the meaning of culture in Kant's Critical Philosophy, and also the metaphysical and philosophical foundations of this concept. Also, due to the vague and irregular use of the terms Kultur and Bildung (and combining them with concepts such as Zivilisation and Erziehung) in the second half of the eighteenth century, in the intellectual space of Germany, the understanding of the meaning of culture is largely obscure and controversial. Therefore, the present paper not only limits the scope of its discussion to Kant's critical philosophy and its three major books (Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, and Critique of Judgment, with the consideration of Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals), and not only has shown the usage of the Kultur and Bildung in these works, but also has always focused on the theoretical and metaphysical foundations of these applications. In a word, the present paper tries to clarify the meaning and implications of these terms by categorizing the subject matter and the analysis of different practices of Culture (whether in the Bildung or Kultur form) in three of Kant's main books, and ultimately answering this main question that 'What does the term "culture" mean in Kant's critical philosophy'?

Quantum Mechanics is the revolutionary theory that changes the structure of human thinking. From Einstein up to now, however, with its enormous successes in the world, there are many scientists that opposed it and denyed it as a complete theory. One of the ways to question the completeness of this theory is to use Gö del’ s incompleteness theorems. Kurt Gö del, in his Ph. D. studied and just after working on the Hilbert’ s completeness and consistency program in the formal systems, proved two important theorems which are known as the Gö del’ s incompleteness theorems. These theorems deny Hilbert’ s programs and the completeness of the formal system. Generalizing these theorems to the quantum theory is an over decades challenge in the foundations of physics. In this Paper, we explain the problem and we will discuss and critrize the possible usage of the Gö del’ s incompleteness theorems on the quantum mechanics.

Drawing on Ibn Sina's writings, scholars' attention has been drawn to the question of whether he can be considered as a theoretician in mystical arena or his writings should be interpreted in a different way. Is Ibn Sina a Peripatetic Philosopher or, as he calls himself, an enlightened philosopher? Can he be call a mystic with a mystical world view? This article first addresses both proponents' and opponents's views as regards Ibn Sina's mysticism. Then we go through his writings to explore whether he has a tendency towards peripateticism, Neoplatonism, or mysticism. After that examing his philosophical and mystical works, we explore whether his has a tendency towards pure rationalism, mysticism, a combination of both or we can see in his scholarly life tendency towards peripatetic philosophy and esotericism. Finally, it is concluded that in addition to being Peripatetic and rationalistic philosopher, he was cognizant of mysticism and esotericism and even he himself was of the type.

The subject of evil and good is the most difficult problem in philosophy and divine religion and all religions acknowledge this, and no one has ever denied it. Hence, at first glance, the existence of evil appears in the figure of the order of being, and shows his filthiness; because evil is actually the opposite of goodness, and with the formation of evil among human beings, the structure of their lives becomes disoriented, and it damages human society. Philosophers and scholars have addressed this issue in two general terms. A group of scientists believe that this is a matter of the laws of nature, therefore, it must be studied according to the laws of nature, in this case, it must be seen as a material case. Another group interprets the phenomenon of evil in the universe with a religious and metaphysical view. In fact, they give a metaphysical reading of the existence of evil and link it somehow to the act of God. This article aims to, (incomplete).

One of most important issues discussed by philosophers is the nature of man’ s happiness and its relationship with the pleasure. St. Thomas Aquinas in Christian tradition and Sadr al-Muta’ allihin Shirazi in Islamic tradition has discussed in details this issue. Both of them maintain that man attains happiness when his intellect, as the Characteristic of human being, fulfills its potentials and apprehends the highest intelligibles. Also because they consider pleasure as the conception the things which are pleasant and agreeable to powers, man can reach the excellent and the most perfect pleasure through the perception of the highest intellects. Nonetheless they differ in that St. Thomas considers pleasure as concomitant to happiness and Mullasadra believes in the identity of the happiness and the pleasure. To put it in a different way, while St. Thomas categorizes the happiness and the pleasure respectively as action and affection, Mulla Sadra holds that these two concepts, though different with regard to their meaning, denotes a unique reality which is simultaneously both happiness and pleasure, so they are not included among the categories.

There are different approaches to the causal role of moral attributes in the realization of physical affairs. Some such as Jaegwon Kim believe that ethical features, like mental affairs, do not have any causal role in the realization of physical affairs, and this is the reason for the existence of moral characteristics. In contrast, Shafer Landau believes that although ethical features do not have an independent role in physical affairs, this does not mean the absence of these features. And essentially, the existence or absence of moral attributes is not related to their role or not. In this paper, we observe that Shafer Landau rejects the first view. But Shafer Landau's view is also rejected. It is stated that, firstly, moral attributes have an causal role and, secondly, the causal role is the reason why those attributes are of existence. In this essay, ultimately formulate the causation argument in defense of moral realism, although we do not claim that we have a definite reason.

Martin Heidegger, the famous German philosopher of the twentieth century, is one of the most important existence philosophers. For Heidegger, the most fundamental question is the question of "existence, " which, unfortunately, has always been overlooked due to the much attention to beings instead of existence. But this question can find its answer only by examining and recognizing the only questioner of the existence, Dasein. Dasein means the concrete existence or "being-in-the-world. " What is meant by the "world" is not the world of physical objects or the world around us, but it refers to our preoccupations and interests, which, contrary to what commonly believed, not only are not in opposition to man, but constitute inherently the other side of the coin of human existence and consequently, they are inseparable from him.

This paper devoted to examination and analysis of examples and instances in ancient Greek literature – philosophical or other works, to make clear the concept/s of "Nature" (φύσις) in them. The significant of finding word''s meaning and sense, and effects of this task in avoiding fundamental fallacies and misconceptions, is not meager. In fragmentary or defective texts, that task with suggesting several different possible meanings for the word, can proximate us to author''s real sense or aim. Firstly and briefly, I explain several interpretations that all of them have common side, i.e. shared in dedication only one meaning or sense to "Nature" and then, I try to give a sufficient and satisfactory examples for several and multitude possible meanings of "Nature" on the base of main primeval original texts and literature. Quoting context of every case, I proceed to propose my own translation and interpretation of that situation to the best of my ability. In conclusion limited or one meaning approach for that word, the view that we expounded in first section of paper, is disproved.

Plato and Plotinus, both as the two of the most influential philosophers of the classical period, had a special attention to intuition. Given the different approaches to the different philosophical issues that they have, it requires us to doubt on their unique visions upon intuition. The exact matter of the present paper is to consider what it means “ intuition” to each of these two philosophers? By what method to be achieved? What are its characteristics and what things belong to? The response to the question, which will be clear in the end, is that the intuition for both of them is an immediate manifestation that is happening to human intellect; though both Plato and Plotinus, in order to achieve intellectual intuition, recommend activities to the Seekers which are primarily of two types of intellectual practice and self-purification activities. Also at the end we will be led to the conclusion that, regardless of significant differences between the two philosophers on the philosophical line and the way they interpret the issues, they both apply the intuition in a single meaning that can be achieved with respect to both theory and practice.

Before the modern philosophy, the prevailing view in human thought was to attribute human qualities to both God and the world. Accordingly, anthropomorphism about both God and the world can be considered a dominant feature before the modern age. These characteristics mainly included such things as having perception and will. In the modern age and with the intellectual and philosophical developments of modern man, the human characteristic of God and the world was gradually denied and taken away and considered only to man. On the new view, God is primarily the god of negative theology and the universe is subject to mechanical forces and therefore lacks the soul and consequently perception and will. On this basis, it seems permissible to speak of the title of "dehumanization" of God and the world in the mind of the new man. This new view has left important implications for man's understanding of himself, God, and the world, and the relationship between the three.

In the history of Islamic and Christian thought, natural law is one of the most important theories that has explained the nature of morality recommended by religion. Professor Phineas (Christian philosopher and theologian) and Allameh Taleghani (Islamic philosopher and theologian) are two well-known figures in philosophy and theology. In this paper, regardless of the moral content of the theory of these two thinkers, we examine the consequences of their principles and show that the logical re-reading of their foundations from the perspective of theology, anthropology, epistemology and metaphysics leads to a strong reading of the religious theory of natural law.; Strong reading is a reading that, along with realistic metaphysics, acknowledges a kind of "natural epistemology" in religious ethics, meaning that in addition to advocating the objectivity of the norms of religious ethics, which for these two thinkers is equivalent to natural law, states that it is possible to know the contents of these norms without referring to the sacred texts and only in the light of natural wisdom.

Among the approaches about the nature of scientific theory, we could refer to positivism and model-theory approaches. These approaches are fraught with difficulties so they couldn’ t resolve the problem of scientific theories. The model-theory approach which is the Van Fraassen’ s concern, is not acceptable, and. In contrast to these views, Churchland--as a scientific realist--suggests a sense of realism to resolve the scientific theories’ problem. He uses the achievements of cognitive science and proposes a connectionist model as an alternative to propositional and model-theory approaches, but his suggestion is faced with serious problem: Only by the connectionist models of scientific theory we couldn’ t give any representation between these models and the world whereas Churchland takes it for granted, and doesn’ t give any reasoning. Here we are going to explain the Churchland’ s approach and its backgrounds then we will try to treat its difficulties and introduce cognitive approach as an extension of realism.