FALSAFEH (THE IRANIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY)
Year:2019 | Volume:47 | Issue:1 |Papers Count:12

In Thomas Aquinas’ s philosophy, beauty is a metaphysical attribute and is connected to being; thus, being can be regarded as the origin of the beauty of objects. Form is a key concept in the aesthetics of Aquinas and is the basis of the beauty of all objects. Everything that Aquinas says about Beauty implies that it is based on form. In his philosophy, the form of an object is connected to the actuality of that object; so beauty is inseparable from actuality. The form of an object is the internal norm of its beauty; furthermore, the three conditions of beauty that Aquinas speaks of, i. e. integrity, harmony, and clarity, represent the concept of form. On the other hand, Aquinas connects beauty with knowledge and believes that the perception of a beautiful object is an epistemological perception, because beauty is connected to the form. Seeing or perception are acts in which the perceiver perceives a formal reality through the perception process. Therefore, in Aquinas’ s opinion, the perceiver’ s mental act generates beauty and form is the intermediate between the mind of the perceiver of beauty and the beautiful object so that the mind knows the object through its form. Thus, we can consider form as an intermediate between the reality and the mind, because form is both the intellectual side of a beautiful object and the basis of the concrete aspect of it.

The problem of knowledge and the level of human knowledge of objects is one of the important issues of the history of thought and philosophy. Abd al Razzaq Lahiji (1072 AH) and John Locke (1632-1704) are among the philosophers who have investigated the subject of knowledge and the level of human knowledge. Lahiji believes in an Islamic philosophical theory called “ phantasm of representative” . In his book, Shavaregh al-Elham, he states that we, in our knowledge of objects, do not achieve their essence and reality, but achieve a phantasm that represents the object. Locke, too, in his book, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, distinguishes between two different types of essence, that is the real essence and the nominal essence of objects, and contends that our knowledge of objects is limited to their nominal essence. The similarity between Lahiji and Locke’ s philosophy is that they both believe that the power of human is too limited to achieve the reality and the essence of objects, but they differ in their views on the quiddity of knowledge and perception.

The conflict between freedom and system a concept derived from the Greek word σ υ ν ί σ τ η μ ι has always been the subject of philosophical debate. Yet, German idealists formulated the relation between these two concepts explicitly. In their formulation, system, which guarantees the coherence of knowledge, is a subjective and rational foundation. But Heidegger, in his later thought, went beyond the concept of system whose structure is determined by mathematical order and hence has absolutely subjective implications; instead he used the concept of fugue to refer to the structure of Being’ s swaying, i. e. the enowning event (ereignis). However, the concept of fugue has its own order and does not follow the same rules as system does. The prominent feature of this order is preserving the unity components, while every component is also self-confident. It is notable that in this structure, the self-confidence of every component is even strengthened by its freedom. Thus, the concept of fugue let Heidegger think of a systematic structure which is not against freedom, but is based on it.

According to the common belief regarding authentic existence and contingent quiddity, authenticity and contingency indicate essential truth and accidental truth of external reality respectively. Hence, not only does quiddity not have any share of reality in the external world, but also it does not represent anything beyond itself. Such interpretation of the concept of authentic existence cannot be credible and clearly contradicts Mulla Sadra’ s own words on this matter. This misconception originates from the presupposition of a kind of relation between truth and external realization, and the way Sadra raises and discusses the issue. This research argues that regardless of its connection with Sadra, this interpretation, as an independent philosophical theory, lacks the necessary internal coherence and arguments and opposes common sense.

We often define Technology as instruments and tools produced by a technician and art as works such as paintings, sculpture, architecture, poems etc. created by an artist. From an ontic point of view, such humanistic definitions are correct but if we look for the essence of things and want to determine their ontological status, correct definitions are not enough because the essence of everything is that which allows it to be what it is. Thus, merely the technician or the artist and their artifacts cannot specify the essence of technology and art. This paper tries to determine the ontological status of technology and art based on the relation of human to Being from the viewpoint of Heidegger. Moreover, considering that he recognizes different periods of history as ages of Being and believes that Being has revealed itself in various forms including Poiesis and Gestell in each age, the research tries to find out why this thinker has called the ancient Greek the age of Art and the present day the age of Technology.

Hegel explains the development of spirit through the evolution of sensational consciousness, self-consciousness, reason, spirit, religion, and absolute wisdom. Consciousness moves dialectically along the context of history. Therefore, knowledge is dynamic and self-discoverable. On the other hand, Mannheim views knowledge in social contexts. To him, consideration of the essence of knowledge prevents it from being pure and stagnant and puts it into social context. Thus, Hegel puts knowledge into historical context and Mannheim puts it into social context. This article studies the influence of Hegel’ s phenomenology on Mannheim to understand the way in his philosophy (Mannheim’ s) knowledge is related to Hegel’ s philosophical cognition. Mannheim, in his introduction of fundamental concepts such as history, ideology, false consciousness, action, totality, knowledge, and truth, which had a crucial role in his development of sociology of knowledge, has been under the influence of The Phenomenology of Spirit. So we can say that Mannheim expands the Hegelian concepts of consciousness and knowledge in his sociology of knowledge.

Within the contemporary literature, there is a common ground about the history of the problem of primacy of existence. According to this notorious story, the prominent roles are those played by Ibn Sina, Suhrawardi and Sadra; and Mirdamad plays a complementary role: Ibn Sina, in contrary to Ashari Mutakallemun, claims that existence is something added to essence in mind; Surawardi denies that this distinction is in reality; Mirdamad articulates the problem as a disjunction of primacy of existence or essence; at the end, Sadra presents the thesis of primacy of existence. It is argued that all these historical information are incorrect. Firstly, there is a controversy on whether Ibn Sina believes in the distinction of existence and essence in mind or in reality. Secondly, there was a vast debate on the distinction among philosophers after Ibn Sina. Thirdly, Suhrawardi is one of many who come in the debate and argue against the Followers of Peripatetic Philosophers. Fourthly, the text based upon which the articulation of the problem is ascribed to MIrdamad is mistakenly thought to be among his writings. Fifthly, Mirdamad and Sadra come into this traditional controversy, but have different views.

The present paper studies Alpharabius’ s philosophy of language to shed light on his views on the nature of language. Alpharabius believes that language has two levels. The first is the internal level or what is in mind, i. e. the intellectual and imaginary understanding, which, as he maintains, is the definition of the perceptual world. The second is the superficial level or words, which are the expression of the first part or level of language. These two levels are based on intellect, as the third meaning of utterance he considers three meaning for utterance. In his definition of language, he adds the factor of the speaker’ s intention of expression. As a result, language, to Alpharabius, is not just the means of conveyance of words, but formation of meanings as well as expression of those meanings constitute language. It seems that language has no fixed essence, since the nature of language for different people depends on how they use their intellect and how their use of language is based on logic. On the other hand, the formation of intellectual and imaginary understanding of people is different.