Journal Of Religious Thought
Year:2005 | Volume:- | Issue:14|Papers Count:7

To discuss the quality of the actualization of religious faith, and the factors contributing to its strength and continuity is of special importance. In addition to the fact that from a theoretical point of view, surveying this question is instrumental in achieving a deeper understanding of the concept of faith and that familiarity with it, as an existential question, has an impressive role in the inner development of man, from a practical view, it can also help us to present appropriate strategies to establish and develop it in society. Considering the fact that based upon the human's heart, the presence of faith can be increased or reduced, this paper, deals with the study of the basis of its semantic structure. First, different views used to determine the underlying components of the concept of 'faith' are divided into three theories: rational knowledge, intuitive knowledge and self resignation. Then through criticizing and surveying them, the physical and spiritual resignation to God, will be introduced as the final factor in the semantic structure of religious faith. Then, the role of good deeds as an innate necessity in acquiring moral virtues and the influence of these virtues on preserving and strengthening religious faith is explained.    

Ibn Sina and Mulla Sadra are two Muslim philosophers whose philosophical principles and beliefs have been dominant in the Iranian philosophical centers for centuries. The principle of the unity of the intellect and the intelligible separates the ways of these two philosophers. Ibn Sina severely criticizes it while Mulla Sadra considers it as one of his honours. In this article, explaining the point of difference between the two, we first mention four arguments of Ibn Sina against this principle, and then we will answer to and reject them according to Mulla Sadra's doctrines. In different places a comparison between the two philosophers is made and in the end, the contribution of each one is specified, but Mulla Sadra's viewpoint is supported.

One of the characteristics of Kant's philosophy is the heaviness and the extraordinary complexity of his philosophy. This heaviness and ambiguity can be, more or less, observed in his commentators' works to such an extent that the study of their works will not help solve the problem. This article is an attempt to explain the epistemological objectivity in Kant's philosophy on the one hand, and on the other, is an effort to simplify what Kant has intended to s tate in this regard. The main objective of the author is to clarify the point that, how Kant could speak about the epistemological objectivity despite his claim that we cannot acquire the reality-in-itself

The problem of the possibility of knowledge is one of the main issues in epistemology, which dates back to the beginning of philosophy. In this regard, some Western philosophers have embarked to solve the problem by presupposing the possibility of knowledge, some others by accepting the claims posed by skeptics, still some others by appealing to theology and again some others, through a new explanation of objectivity which has led to deepening the gap between the subject and the object, and have, thus, supported one of its two aspects. All these viewpoints are based on the assumption of contrast between the subject and the object and definition of knowledge as something in which no error is admitted; more over, they are deprived of any philosophical reasoning in favor of the possibility of knowledge, and have bore no results but tides of skepticism.      

It seems that the differences between Aristotle's and Hume's philosophical foundations minimize the possibility of subsuming the two scholars under the same ethical theory. Hume's empiricism and Aristotle's rationalism imply several epistemological consequences for the field of ethics. This difference may be clarified by examining their positions concerning status and definition of "virtue" and "happiness", as well as through exploration of the role of practical wisdom in epistemology based on Aristotle's ethics. Likewise, exploring the role of sensations in order to recognize the moral rules and the slavery of reason to sensations in Hume's ethics may prove adequately well. In spite of these differences, this article attempts to justify the idea that Hume belongs to Aristotle's theory of virtue ethics. We may link Hume's opinions to Aristotle's and justify the connection through the close relation between reason and sensation, the dominance of reason over sensation in recognizing the rules, the significance of the role of virtues in this recognition, and, finally, the role of pleasure in the evaluation of moral actions.      

In this essay the rain in the Quran has several functions which most attractive of those are referral function of rain, semantic function of rain, semiological function of rain, psychological function of rain, moral function of rain (rain's concept in matrix of free association) and phenomenological function of rain. In this essay each of these functions have been studied by ascription them to the verses of Quran.      

The problem of unity and multiplicity and the way of explaining it always has been considered by philosophers as an important subject. In this relation, approaching the unity by reducing multiplicity to it, is one of the important characteristic of philosophical thought. Meanwhile, Ibn Sina tries to justify and explain the generation of multiplicity form unity. His philosophical principles and presuppositions is such that we cannot find his philosophy consistence with the theory of Oneness of Being (Wahdat al-Wujud).