JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGICAL RESEARCH
Year:2016 | Volume:18 | Issue:1 (69)|Papers Count:7

One of the concerns of Muslim philosophers is how some people take cognizance of some facts about the future via veridical dream, inspiration and revelation. The present paper seeks to answer the question from the viewpoint of Sohrevardi and Mulla Sadra, given their position in Islamic mysticism.Accordingly, it is argued that the wayfarer, passing various stages of spiritual journey and bearing ascetic practices, is able to connect to the hidden realm in which the truths have been recorded and take cognizance of the matters related to the future as well as the facts to which lay people have no access, in the light of such connection. This hidden realm is the very imaginal world and a person, whether awake or asleep, can connect to this world through imagination, and some truths are revealed to him. Veridical dream happens through spiritual journey of the soul in the imaginal world and the details that prophets and saints receive from the hidden world at the moment of revelation are all related to such a world. Therefore, the paper aims to explicate these matters on the basis of that world.

Illuminationist epistemology is a transcendent system which can explain the position of inherent knowledge and its relationship with other kinds of human knowledge. Self-evidence, infallibility, stability, generality, potentiality to describe the universality and gradation are among the features of inherent knowledge in Sohrevardi's view. The conceptual scope of inherent knowledge expands particularly in luminous system and illuminationist science of soul, such that empirical knowledge is possibly a sub-category of inherent knowledge when rereading the concept and theories related to modes of perception. According to Mulla Sadra's illuminationist view, intellectual knowledge has an analytical, abstract, and combinative function, is generally acquired and distinct from inherent knowledge. According to Sohrevardi' s view, however, intellectual knowledge is explained in a way that can have a strong relationship with inherent knowledge. Some kinds of intuitive knowledge have also features which are the same of those of inherent knowledge. Using a descriptive-analytical method and citing evidence and documents, the present paper seeks to study these issues, given the central position of inherent knowledge in the intellectual system of illuminationist knowledge.

According to some traditions in Shia’s hadith collections, man's substance or the very clay from which he is created, called "Tinat" in Shia texts, has a fundamental role in his happiness and misery, or becoming a believer or nonbeliever. According to the traditions, God has created the believers from pleasant and good quality clay called "Tinat Ellyeen (most lofty substance) " and nonbelievers from unpleasant clay called "Tinat Sijjin (the lowest depth) ".Arguably, these traditions with such interpretations are contrary to man's free will and thus to divine justice. Therefore, different scholars have greatly tried to resolve this contradiction and proposed different solutions. The present paper recounts, reviews and criticizes these solutions and finally proposes anew solution and approach to interpret and explicate these traditions.

Most works about Descartes have explicitly provided a mathematical image of the world in his metaphysics. A descriptive analysis of how Descartes describes nature through mathematics and enters exact sciences into natural philosophy has not been provided, because philosophical circles have neglected his scientific and mathematical works and have more considered his metaphysical works. Some scholars have, even, regard Descartes' s philosophizing as independent from his scientific works, while delicate points of his mathematical thinking has exerted influence on all his metaphysical works, which will be neglected if his mathematical works are not studied. The present paper seeks to review Descartes's path to achieve a mathematical image of the world through studying the intricacies of his scientific and mathematical works and show how such an insight to nature regards man as dominant over the world, able to possess and change it.

The problem of evils is a theological issue. The question is how the existence of evils can be justified, given divine knowledge, power and widespread grace, and how divine revelation explains them? The discussion is based on the assumption that evils- such as pain, illness and poverty- and their foundations- such as Satan- are existential, and how they are emanated from God as the absolute goodness. Over the history, philosophers and theologians have tried to answer these questions. The present paper, nonetheless, elaborates on evil in terms of its substance and instance form the view of linguists, compares it with the text of the Quran, explains the scope of evils and their foundations in divine revelation, and resolves the doubts about evils based on the differentiation between the attributes of the essence and attributes of act, and boundedness of divine attributes in the Quran, centering around poplar views of interpreters and scholars.

The tradition of "Layoghan" is an example of religious text whose exoteric and literal meaning contradicts with Holy Prophet's moral and mystical state.It is cited in Shia and Sunny hadith collections and reads as: "every day a veil covers my hearth like a cloud, thus I ask for divine pardon seventy times every day". Gathering, analyzing, studying the approaches and evaluating different kinds of moral and mystical solutions for the contradiction between Holy Prophet's asking for divine pardon and his moral and mystical state, the present paper validates different possibilities in this regard and comes to conclusion that there could be only two proper justifications for Holy Prophet's asking for divine pardon, among twenty three mystical solution: interpreting the hadith as asking for divine pardon from the state lower than the state of Oneness, which is specific to the Holy Prophet; and interpreting it as the ability and endurance in the state of Oneness and consistency in it.These two solutions are not only in harmony with Holy Prophet's infallibility but also with states higher that the infallibility, which is the condition for prophecy.

Hedonism as an idea is a theory, according to which happiness is ultimate good and unhappiness is the ultimate evil. Materialist schools of thought, which generally believe in hedonism, have various expressions in different human cultures. Hindu culture is no exception, because there is a distinctive school of philosophy in this culture, called Charvaka, which considers pleasure as the only meaning and aim of life, due to having materialistic school of thought. Epicurean philosophy in Greece is the closest school to Charvaka. These two philosophies formed schools with a hedonistic nature, which could attract many people over centuries in spite of their many enemies and great oppositions. A comparative study of hedonism in these two philosophies through available library resources shows that both of them believe man should be happy and enjoy life completely, because they apparently believe only in the validity and existence of material world, explain man's existence on the basis of his material dimension, and reject any kind of existence afterlife. There are, however, some differences between these two philosophies. Epicureans are completely different with a particular sect of Charvakans in terms of their view about the meaning and kinds of pleasure.Furthermore, Epicureans regard higher happiness and pleasure more as the absence of pain, unlike the followers of Charvaka who regard physical pleasures as the only valid ones. The main aim of Charvakans is to deepen and extend the scope of pleasure, whereas Epicureans seek to reduce the pain as much as possible.