مجله فلسفه و کلام اسلامی
سال پنجاه و یکم شماره 2 (پاییز و زمستان 1397)

The main issue pursued in the present study is to clarify the role of hermeneutics in the theology of Fayz Kashani. In this regard, we have attempted to extract his views on the relationship between hermeneutics and theology. For him, hermeneutics is a way to understand the religion, and ignoring it jeopardizes a theologian’s theological missions. The role hermeneutics plays in clarification, regulation, and interpretation of religious beliefs has a major position in Fayz’s theological works. In his views, a theologian ignoring hermeneutics is like a man who is seeking religion in darkness. His reference to Rumi’s story of elephant in the dark room illustrates this issue. The other implication of hermeneutics in his views is elaborated through anthropological issues.

Aristotle tried to reject the self-mover by indirect argument, so he postulated a physical entity that has a prime and self-movement. Then he reminded that there are parts in every moving body and imagined that if a part in the self-mover body stops, consequently, the whole will stop. The argument was criticized and some Aristotle’s commentators, including Avicenna and Averroes, tried to defend it by reconstructing it through correcting its mistakes and removing its deficiencies. Avicenna initially tried to reconstruct the idea, but after criticizing it, he didn’t insist on its unconditional acceptance. On the other hand, Averroes not only didn’t reject the notion of self-movement, but through applying it to the first-mover, offered a new theory.

In the history of philosophy, what is found about Ghazali’s views on philosophy is often his critical ones, so that his views are introduced as a departure point of the Ash'arites rationalism and are regarded as opposing to philosophy, especially, opposing to Avicenna and Farabi’s philosophical views. but, does this show the real position of Ghazali? The answer proposed in this article shows Ghazali’s fascination to Avicenna’s Eastern Hekmat and his following Avicenna’s footsteps. Also, Ghzali’s influence from Avicenna in his methodology and attitude is shown in a phenomenological way; that means, although critical literature of Ghazali, which is due to his political position, made some of his philosophical views, but individually, he is the follower of eastern Hekmat.

Personal unity of existence is one of the most important mystical beliefs that has brought about numerous challenges in the field of philosophical thought and has been both criticized and defended by the philosophers. Aqa Ali Modarres Tehrani and Abu al-Hassan Jelveh are among the philosophers who have criticized the mystical doctrine of personal unity of existence and refuted. Aqa Ali Modarres, due to his graded notion of existence and based on this principle, has challenged the theory of personal unity of existence while the fundamental difference between the theosopher and philosopher is undeniable. Jelveh has critiqued the theory of mystics for the same reason and using a mixture of some philosophical and mystical terms. In fact, none of the philosophers has succeeded to put himself in the shoes of a mystic and explain this theory. In the current essay, after analysis and comparison of these two philosophers’ ideas, the authors conclude that these thinkers have denied the doctrine of personal unity of existence because Aqa Ali Modarres has accepted a special notion of the primacy of existence, and Jelveh has been a proponent of essentialism. Moreover, it has become clear that the difference of the methodology of these two philosophers lies in the way that they have extracted the themes and discussed the sources, in the sense that there is a type of diversity of sources and references to mystics and philosophers in the treatises of Jelveh while Aqa Ali Modarres has systematized the themes based on a Sadraean point of view, and for this reason, his works are of a particular order.

Avicenna, beside his theoretical discussions about experimentation, practically applied his experimental method to natural sciences studies such as medicine, biology, and meteorology. His theoretical discussions subsume propositions concerning the conditions under which experimental knowledge is attained, the components of this knowledge and its functions. Some of these propositions are as follows: necessity of recurrent observations for acquiring experimental knowledge, certainty plus conditional universality of such knowledge, and its role as demonstrative premises. Investigating the application of his theory in natural sciences propound two new features which were not elaborated in the theoretical fallibility of experimental knowledge and necessity of systematic observation. This research, using the analytic method and referring to both philosophical and scientific works of Avicenna, clarifies that a comprehensive definition of experimentation is dependent on considering extracted points from practical application of experimental knowledge, beside its theoretical components

In modern modal logic, the relations between modality and quantification are shown by Buridan and Barcan formulas. Zia Movahed, Lotfollah Nabavi and Mahdi Azimi have shown Ibn Sina’s anticipation of the formulas. In this paper, I show that Ibn Sina anticipated just in de re and de dicto modalities and his points in Shifa and Isharat do not verify the attribution of the formulas to him. Even his followers, beginning from Bahmanyar to Fakhr Al-Din Razi, have not deducted the formulas from his writings. The first who stipulated the formulas was Afdal Al-Din Khunaji, who, as we shall show, denied them for the actualist reading of the quantifiers, and in his discussion of the formulas for the possibilist reading, there were some ambiguities, which are present in his commentators and his followers. Then came shams Al-Din Samarqandi and Qutb Al-Din Razi, who opposed Khunaji; so, we cannot attribute the belief in the formulas to Ibn Sina, nor his followers.

Scrutinizing philosophers' scripts centered upon love vis-à-vis beauty, I'm trying to sketch out a concrete as well as discrete conception. In working out the concept of beauty as being specified by perfection, Suhrawardi sounds to follow Avicenna. Applied to the Necessary Being, they both contend, true beauty is actually true of volitional actions, dispositions, and acquisitions serving to achieve final happiness. Avicenna compellingly speaks of a certain love as volitional love marked by perception include the following: sensible, imaginal, illusory, presumptive, and intellectual, due to which volitional love as well as beauty include sensible, imaginal, illusory, presumptive, and intellectual. The acme of volitional love, to Avicenna, is intellectual love including intellectual perception, below of which love goes by the name of animal love. Exemplifying intellectual love by the king of love as well as the Suleyman of love, Suhrawardi tends to follow the Avicennian conceptions, along which pictorially represents love and beauty in his esoteric treatises. As both argue, the way to beauty proves to be love thereby the way to true beauty is downright intellectual love.

Reliabilism is one the externalist theories of justification which, according to some epistemologists, can be used to avoid skepticism. Alvin Plantinga believes that reliabilism can prevent skepticism only if it is not combined with metaphysical naturalism, materialism, and evolution-based explanation because, according to him, the output of such a combination would be that the reliability of all productions of cognitive faculties, including naturalism itself, will be subject to extreme skepticism, and the naturalist is forced to abandon the presumption of the reliability of cognitive faculties. Plantinga conditions reliability of cognitive faculties to its combination with supernatural metaphysics and believes that only those who follow the Abrahamic religions can claim the reliability of their cognitive faculties in the virtue of believing in God who has created human beings in His image. The present research, while accepting his ability to depict inefficiencies of naturalism and materialism in justifying the various manifestations of life, criticizes him of committing a kind of Cartesian circle.