Philosophy and Kalam
Year:2020 | Volume:53 | Issue:1|Papers Count:15

The issue of natural rights is one of the old subject matters discussed by theologians and philosophers. My question in this essay is what John Locke and Morteza Motahhari’ s views on the meaning and role of natural rights, especially, what their views on four central aspects of natural rights, namely freedom, justice, ownership, and human rights, are, and in what respects their views are resemble and in what others are different. The present study addresses critically the foundations of these two thinkers on natural right and consider whether or not these foundations are rooted in theology or anthropology or both? Then, shedding light on resemblances and differences between the two thinkers, who belong to different philosophical traditions, we assess the effects and consequences of their perspective towards natural rights concerning human society. Ultimately, we show that Motahhari and Locke’ s perspectives towards human rights based on their distinct philosophical traditions introduce different horizons to human development and progress.

The foundation of Islamic insights is monotheism. Aqa Ali Modarres has an outstanding commitment to monotheism, and it is clearly reflected in his impactful works, the “ Rasalah fi Al-Tawhid” and “ Badayeá ol-Hekam” , especially in his answer to the question regarding personal unity of existence. The more he has elaborated on the answer, the more it has been subjected to misinterpretations. Reviewing the theory of Aqa Ali Modarres of personal unity of existence and scrutinizing the claims of the article “ Abu al-Hassan Tabatabaei (Jelveh) and Aqa Ali Modarres on The Theory of Personal Unity of Existence” reveals the fundamental errors this article has made in the review and judgment of the Tehran Sage’ s viewpoint. By reducing the fundamental principle of primacy of existence as well as interpreting transcendental wisdom statements out of their context, this article tries to prove Aqa Ali Modarres has completely denied the personal unity of existence. The main methodological and contextual shortcomings of this article are overlooking the transcendental wisdom principle of “ transition from Bedayat to Nehayat” especially the transition from graduation to manifestation of existence and from specialized to more specialized as well as the most specialized graduation; not paying enough attention to move form causality to evolution; inadequate elaboration on similarities between difference of attributes and difference of complete separation; failure to notice the Sage’ s emphasis on doctrine of exterior and interior; and most importantly neglecting the frequent terminology used by believers in unity of existence in describing levels of unity form public unity to unification, specialized unification, and more specialized unification. This will expose the misinterpretations in aforementioned article and highlights the importance of investigating the transcendental Sage’ s view point merely in its context.

The unity of being, as the most fundamental pillar of mysticism and transcendent Wisdom, has been the locus of exchanging views among scholars in these two fields of sciences. The present study tries to investigate whether or not the individual unity of existence was reasonably proposed by philosophers before Mulla Sadra in philosophy. Shams al-Din Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Khafari is one of the philosophers of the ninth and tenth centuries AH who has raised this issue and presented an argument for it. Proposing two arguments from Khafri, including the analysis of the causality and the analysis of the unity of the concept of existence, we come to the conclusion that he has expressed the individual unity of existence in a reasoned manner during his philosophical discussions, through declaring subjects like principality of existence, particular gradation, copulative existence, and so on, long time before Mulla Sadra.

The classification of general concepts and types of intelligibles is one of the most important philosophical issues that has had an important position and influence on philosophical thinking. According to some Muslim philosophers, the intelligibles are divided into three categories: primary intelligible and philosophical secondary intelligible and logical secondary intelligible. This famous division is not complete and seems to be confusing and is faced with some difficulties such as incompatibility with holy concepts and its vague relationship to the primacy of existence and some other concepts; in this article, at first, the famous narrative is described, and then we address it critically. A new division is proposed that does not include flaws and ambiguities of the famous division. Finally, the concept of existence is considered as the source of division and other concepts are considered the its branches and, in this way, the popular division of general concepts changes fundamentally.

Abd-al-Jabbar was interested in skepticism as an inherent part of human thought. He made some debates on both global and local skepticism trying to answer the sophists and subjectivists’ objections. He also challenged the ideas of the ones who denied the knowledge by reason. Facing with sophists, Abd-al-Jabbar rejects the Balkhi and Abu Ali’ s methodologies. He prefers his master’ s, Abuhashim, method and says that, we should not discuss with sophist; in contrast we only must attract their attentions to the reality. He rejects the subjectivism and claims that this point of view is paradoxical. In addition, he shows that rejecting other sources of knowledge, such as reason and testimony is inconsistent in that it finally will lead to denying all the sources of knowledge. He regards reason (the human ability for understanding the world) and testimony as sources of knowledge and holds that the only type of skepticism that can be accepted is the normative skepticism

Since Mulla Sadra offers some reasons of the existential difference of this world and Hereafter and believes in the impossibility of the existence of these two worlds in the same platform, how could we justify its opposition to the principle of analogical gradation and with considering the Hereafter to be the extension of this world? The objective of the current study is solving the abovementioned problem based on a descriptive-analytic method and through explication of the final ideas of Mulla Sadra in this regard. The results of this research show that if we accept the typical unity or personal unity of existence under the shadow of ultra-special analogical gradation, there will be no opposition, since the difference of this world and the Hereafter from the viewpoint of Mulla Sadra is a type of difference in existential degrees. This world and the Hereafter are manifestations, status and emergences that are not different with each other, and they all return to a unique essence; this is to say that existence is diverse while it is unique and this diversity does not impede the unity.

In his theory of meaning, Frege introduces sinn (=sense) as mode of presentation of bedeutung (=referent). Since, in propositional attitudes, ordinary sinn, according to Frege, is itself a bedeutung, there is another sinn, called “ indirect sense” , in which the mode of presentation of ordinary sinn is contained. Now in nested propositional attitudes the relation between sinn and bedeutung leads to infinite regress which is not acceptable in a theory of meaning. In the present article, we have examined this regress and concluded that Frege’ s theory needs to be amended and that the infinite regress does not arise as a result of such amendment.

It seems that the spirit governing Kierkegaard's ideas about meaningful components is based on religious beliefs. In his view, every human being, through the emergence of individuality, chooses one of the aesthetic, moral, or religious spheres and seeks meaningful life in one of these three. The basic question of the present paper is how to analyze the meaning of life based on the three spheres in Kierkegaard’ s thought. The achievements of this research are as follows: encountering the question of what sphere of human life has more meaning, three different lifestyles are presented: the person seeking aesthetic wants to eliminate ethical and religious matters, while ethical sphere includes aesthetic, and religious sphere includes aesthetic and ethical matters. The important thing is that which of these three spheres can truly be meaningful. It seems that Kierkegaard considers the religious sphere to be the most complete sphere. Despite the meaningfulness of religious life, Kierkegaard sees this meaningful life as independent of the Biblical teachings of Christianity, and is explainable by the emergence of individuality in the face of God. Human beings can make their lives meaningful by choosing one of these spheres, though, without progress in the religious sphere, their lives have no real meaning. Since he, himself, states that without meaning we are in a state of despair and existential weakness, we conclude that meaningful life from Kierkegaard’ s point of view is synonymous with religious life, and meaning must be sought in this sphere.

Athī r al-Dī n al-Abharī (d. ca. 656/1258) was an outstanding Iranian polymath who wrote numerous treatises including Bayā n al-Asrā r, Talkhiṣ al-Ḥ aqa’ iq, Kitā b al-Maṭ ā liʿ , and Zubdat al-Ḥ aqa’ iq. Each treatise contains three subjects: logic, physics, and metaphysics. They were copied by Kā tibī al-Qazwī nī . Al-Abharī , himself, has written ijā za at the beginning of them. The four handwritings are reserved in MS Fazil Ahmed Pasha 1618, in the Library of Kuprili, at Istanbul. In this study I have edited the Logic of Kitā b al-Maṭ ā liʿ . Abhar’ s logic in this work is purely Avicennan.

Time in philosophy is a quantity abstracted from movement. However, in the Quran and Islamic culture, there is another concept of time dealing with phenomena regardless of their own material movement. All phenomena have two aspects of being Molk and Malakoot. By referring to Malakoot (sovereignty) of everything, the Quran leads us to another aspect of meta-time. Glory be to Him Whose hand holds sovereignty over everything! To Him will you return. (Yasin: 83) Thus when we study the Holy Quran, we confront two kinds of time: one is the afaghi time, a quantified time in which the time and space of events are identified and phenomena are studied chronologically and sequentially, and the other is anfosy time in which historical and linear look is set aside and all phenomena are in the same place in a metahistorical horizon. The synchronic order of forms replaces the sequence of the forms. This kind of time is the very “ delicate time” of the sovereignty world. The distinction between afaghy time and anfosy time has a determining and meaningful role in the interpretation of the Quranic verses, because we can read and understand many verses based on the anfosy idea of time. The interpretation of the anfosy verses entails the attendance of the interpreter in the field of Malakoot, as interpretation is to reveal the internal meaning and the meaning hidden in anecdote of the afaghy events. This research examines many examples of the Holy Quran including the verse “ Alast” , the event of the prophet’ s Me’ raj, addressing the prophet in the Joseph’ s story, the verses of resurrection, the conversation of the Heaven and Hell dwellers, and so on, where the role of distinction between afaghi and anfosy time in understanding them is so determining that the interpretation is not possible regardless of the anfosy time.

Narrative, as one of the main discourses of linguistics in the contemporary world, has been introduced to the realm of philosophy and theology too. The tradition of Christian theology has tried to highlight the significance of narrative in its re-reading the Holy Book. This re-reading has its roots in the universality of narrative in all aspects of life. Through this re-reading, believers share an experience with Jesus to reach an objective understanding of theses doctrines. This article aims to briefly describe narrative theology to show that Muslim philosophers, such as Suhrawardi, also applied it in their works. He, in his essays, such as The Red Intellect, tries to link traditions of Iran with Islamic elements. Having shown his agreement with authority of narrative in his prose works, he prepares his audiences for coexistence experiences, during which he could turn theoretical understanding to concrete manifestation of Islamic doctrine.

Al-kindi, the first muslim philosopher, has raised the problem of "existence" in the manner of his own. In Al-kindi's works, the term of existence is used infrequently, and instead of it, the term of "cawn" or "ays" in contradiction with "lays" or "enniah" often is employed. In Al-kindi's writings, of course, the term of existence sometimes means perception and conscience. He distinguishes between thing and its essence, and this distinction bear resemblance to the distinction which late-comers draws between existence and essence. According to the total of his writings, it seems that Al-kindi considers thingness and existence as the real and authentic, and that he regards the essence as the abstract, unreal, and mental construct. Although, during the time of Al-kindi, the problem of the reality of existence or essence, as a problem, yet had not become propounded.

Interpretation is a profound form of thinking seeking to discover the underlying layer of the text through human perceptual abilities. Interpretations of mystics and theologians have been sometimes criticized and considered as the eisegesis and spiritual distortion of Quran, or tasteful interpretations without rational logic. This article aims to examine the mentioned idea by providing a logical inference from text interpretation and the extraction of some interpretational rules based on Mulla Sadra’ s Views. The research method is describing, analyzing, and inferring the rules, focusing on the effect of the bases of cognition on interpretation. The two rules of authenticity of all the words of God, the theory of spirit of meaning, the ontology and the conformity of the worlds of existence, the authority of the form (in addition to its content) of revelation, the rule of changing the context of the text, reconstructing the words in the parallel context, the originality of existence and the levels of existence, the rule of attention to the credits of the world of wisdom, the epistemology of human perceptual powers, and the need for standardized interpretation are the rules that shapes the logic of interpretation in understanding religious lessons. Attention to these rules can mostly remove the charge of eisegesis, tasteful interpretations, and scientific disregard to the interpretations and contribute to a deeper understanding of religious teachings.

In the early twentieth century, along with the course of the new developments in physics, a paradigm, called quantum physics, was introduced, one principle of which is the principle of uncertainty. Its significance is in that some of its interpretations will lead to the denial of the philosophical principle of causality, and, subsequently, the challenges to the Cosmological Arguments for the existence of God, which are based on the principle of causality. In this article, although we benefit from the bases of empirical sciences, our method of studying is a philosophical one. Our claim is that we can provide a concept of quantum physics that is consistent with the principle of causality. As a result of quantum physics, uncertainty would not be a challenge for cosmological argument. Though, from different perspectives, the philosophical critique of the principle of causality has yet to be addressed.