نشریه پژوهش های عقلی نوین
پیاپی 5 (بهار و تابستان 1397)

Phronesis is comparable both in terms of its existence and essence in Heidegger’s and Mullā Sadrā’s thoughts. Heidegger believes in the superiority of phronesis over different aspects of Dasein's disclosedness and revelation such as episteme, techne and sophia, while following Aristotle’s viewpoint, Mullā Sadrā maintains that sophia could be human’s original contingency and mentions that sophia has superiority over all sciences even phronesis. On the other hand, although Mulla Sadra has openly spoken about the superiority of sophia, he has noted the unity of sophia and phronesis to achieve happiness. Moreover, these two philosophers’ opinions in issue, doer, end, and essence of phronesis are comparable. Following Aristotle, Mullā Sadrā believes that phronesis subject is human’s soul and its evolution, while Heidegger maintains that phronesis subject is from Dasein's existence. Such an attitude about subject, doer, end, and essence dominates phronesis, so that Heidegger considers phronesis as an aspect of Dasein's existence and Mulla Sadra considers it as an aspect of knowledge. However, both of these philosophers consider the end of phronesis as the achievement of human to the existence of the original, while they have given different definitions of the existence of the original based on their different bases. According to Mullā Sadrā, the existence of the original is remarkable due to the attention to the origin and resurrection, while Heidegger’s definition of the existence of the original is not directed toward the origin and resurrection, but instead focuses on issues such as self-discovery, attendance, and attention to death.

From the twentieth century onwards, the systemic thought has been focused by the intellectuals as a holistic and efficient one in studying complex systems with emphasis on understanding important principles such as “togetherness and interaction between parts”, “meaningfulness”, and “evolutionism”. Meanwhile in this case, the point which has been less paid attention to is the philosophical elaboration of such a thought. Utilizing a descriptive-analytical method, the authors of the present paper is to study the systematic thought in transcendental theosophy as a comprehensive philosophical monotheistic system and its reflection on knowing the environment, namely the Earth which is considered to be the origin and evolution of beings. Investigating the principles of transcendental theosophy ontology such as fundamentality of existence, gradation of being, transcendent unity of being, relative existence, and the motion in the category of substance show that Mullah Sadrā’s view to natural phenomena such as the Earth is based on a systemic thought and the basic principles of such a thought and its merits are reflected in his viewpoint.  In such an approach, the being is a whole with integrated parts whose integrated elements are consequential and network-fashioned, which depicts a compound one of this immense complex. As one of the most important part of a comprehensive and meaningful system (the being), the earth is evolving transcendentally toward the celestial source. Undoubtedly, such a thought opens up a new horizon to a new naturalism for those in charge of environmental issues.

Discussing non-gnostic factors influential on gnosis is categorized under the new topics in epistemology. Although such factors are not theoretical, cognitive, and epistemic, they play a key role in forming, spreading and developing, or disintegrating and restricting some humanistic knowledge. In Muslim Peripatetic School, the obligation to intellect has caused to degradation of these factors, although among them Fārābi is of a special status, who has mentioned these factors in his works and theses to some extent. However, given Fosusolhekam is added to these works and is considered among Fārābi’s works, this subject is taken into account by him, albeit he has formulated intuitive epistemology in his thesis which has been directly influenced by non-gnostic factors, namely human’s individual deeds. This paper claims that in Fārābi’s philosophy, human’s society and his individual actions and deeds as non-gnostic factors influence human’s gnosis and due to the solid relationship of theory and practice such an influence are extended in a process whereby it contains five basic features.

Like other philosophical issues, the issue of the fundamentality of existence is based on some special imaginary principles. At the first glance, the imaginary principles of this issue are “existence”, “essence”, “fundamental”, and “conventional”. This paper discusses the two later issues. Utilizing a descriptive and historical-philosophical method, a frequency analysis and survey on the earlier works were carried out, but except Sohrevardi, merely in some works by some recent intellects, some deliberate references on the features of “fundamental” and “conventional” issues were made. As defined by the philosophers, “fundamental” means the realized phenomenon in the exterior, the referable sensory, the origin of works, the effected, generated due to its own self, existent by Himself, and son and so forth. As the “Fundamental” and “Conventional” concepts have been used in a complementary way, given different applications of the word “fundamental” are taken into account, the word “conventional” would also take different meanings as well. The sayings of those who study Mullā Sadrā and his critiques imply that each of the concepts of “fundamental” and “conventional” have taken on three general, specific, and the most specific meanings. To get these meanings, focus on the three conditions of “the exterior fulfillment”, “the originality of works”, and “generatedness due to its own self” are of paramount significance. Moreover, the distinction between the concepts “consequentially” and “accidentally” and their oppositeness with “naturally” should be made.

Among the fundamental questions on the relationship between language and reality is the question of the role of language and the extent it influences on describing the real world based on the relation of cognition and reality. There are two general approaches in explaining the intervening role of language in reality description. Language plays no role in representing the reality and is merely an instrument for expressing it according to traditional approaches which are based on raw realism. However, new approaches highlight the intervening role of language in describing the reality. Reviewing the popular approaches to this issue, the present paper attempts to investigate Mulla Sadra's perspectives about this question. The findings of this research show that Mulla Sadra's theory regarding the ego's creativity in realizing intuitive and fictional forms could state the role of language in representing reality. According to this theory, different narrations of language from a single reality, intrinsic nature of meaning and truth could be stated for language.

It is believed that vegetarianism is an oriental tradition and is formed in the Western philosophers of ethics or ordinary people under the influence of Buddhism teachings and Hindu religion. Accordingly, carnivorousness entails violating an ethical rule and consequently is considered to be inadmissible. Carnivorousness is inadmissible due to observing animal rights, so it is abandoned. Anti- carnivorousness argumentations in this register have got “the-other-oriented” background, as animals are regarded as instances of “the-other”. On the other side, abandoning carnivorousness has been common for some Sufis. Some believe that abandoning carnivorousness in some Sufist schools has been under the influence of some Hindu schools and Sufis regard carnivorousness ethically inadmissible. The authors of this paper contend that adhering to such a tradition among the Muslim mystics has not been influenced by other schools of thought and the principles of abandoning carnivorousness by Muslim mystics has been different from the adherents of Hindu schools and contemporary philosophers of Ethics. Abandoning this habit in Sufism is more humanistic rather “the-other-oriented” and its function is more related to the spiritual conduct of people. Thus, it seems that carnivorousness in Sufism is not an ethical issue. However, if the virtuous ethics is taken into account, an ethical elaboration on abandoning carnivorousness by Sufism could be concluded.