فصلنامه تاریخ فلسفه
سال چهارم شماره 4 (پیاپی 16، بهار 1393)

Today, one of the questions raised regarding Islamic philosophy is what is meant by Islamic philosophy and why this philosophy is described by the attribute “Islamic”. Several contradictory ideas have been put forward in response to this question. Some believe that this philosophy is basically the same Greek philosophy, and it is unjustified to add to it the adjectives of “Arabic” and “Islamic”. Some others have reduced it to Islamic theology and kalam because of its supporting Islamic beliefs; nevertheless, there are many thinkers and researchers who believe in the truth and realization of this philosophy and its Islamic nature. These researchers are divided into two major groups: one group maintain that the title of “Islamic” has only a formal sense and argue that this school is called “Islamic philosophy” because it grew and was expanded in Islamic countries by Muslim philosophers and under the rule of Islamic governments. The other group, however, believe that this denomination is due to the nature and content of this philosophy and have provided different ideas in this regard. Some of the great figures of this group believe that, the reason for this denomination is that some of the issues and problems of this school are rooted in Islamic teachings, and some others are at the service of demonstrating these teachings. Some other thinkers also view the well-documented belief of the advocates of this philosophy in the existence of Almighty Necessary and Shar‘i and divine oneness as the main reason for calling it Islamic (in its general sense) philosophy. There are still others who introduce this philosophy as the same prophetic philosophy derived from the Book and Sunnah.The present paper, after explaining and analyzing the above views, concludes that Islamic philosophy is the birth child of the living interaction between Greek and Iranian philosophy and thought and Islamic culture and civilization. Through adhering to philosophical subjects, frameworks, and methods, this school is influenced by Islamic worldview and teachings in many respects. In fact, any kind of limitation in this regard and concentration on certain directions will inevitably lead to the fallacy of essence and aspect.

Islamic philosophers, such as Ibn Sina, have divided human love into true and virtual types. True love is the same extreme enthusiasm and passion for divine essence and attributes, and virtual love itself is divided into soulish love and animal love. The origin of soulish love is the substantial participation and commensurability of the souls of the lover and the beloved. However, the origin of animal love is physical desire and seeking animal pleasure. Ibn Sina believes that virtual love is one of the elements of the “purification of the inner self”, which is one of the goals of ascetic practice and a way for attaining perfection. Mulla Sadra also maintains that in soulish virtual love, the unity of the lover’s soul with that of the beloved through preference and representing the external beauty of the beloved leads to the lovers’ purification of the soul, so that he becomes ready for accepting the station of being annihilated in God. Accordingly, he says that virtual love is a bridge for attaining true love and, ultimately, human perfection.

This paper presents a comparative study of two philosophical trends. Therefore, it has been organized in two parts: process theology and Sadrian Transcendent Philosophy. Process theology appeared in the 20th century as one of the developmental thought processes followed by philosophers in the field of religion. Given all the arguments and conflicts existing in the Middle Ages and Modernity’s atheism, its followers sought to present a new version of theology in which various notions such as God, His pre-eternity, His Power, the existence of evil in the world, the relationship between God and the world of being, and the relationship between the changing world and God are revisited. This new school, which was established by Alfred North Whitehead and expanded by Charles Hartshorne and David Ray Griffin, is presently studied in western academic centers as one of the prevalent theological and religious schools. In general, this school has made two contributions to the field of philosophy: 1) presenting a new version of theology, the conformity of which with holy texts is questionable; 2) presenting a new form of ontology and the quality of God’s relationship with the world.The Transcendent Philosophy was initially founded by Mulla Sadra and developed at three stages: the Avicennan stage of the understanding of existence, gradation of existence, and the individual unity of existence. Although Mulla Sadra has not distinguished these three stages from each other in his magnum opus, al-Asfar, the evolution of his ideas in his various treatises attest to this developmental process. Through discovering the principiality of existence, he proceeded to generalize his understanding of existence from the level of concept to the level of referent. Finally, he presented a new model of God’s relationship with the world of being, which can be practically explored based on the development of his philosophical thoughts. This new approach to the concept of existence affected most theological concepts in the field of religion and prompted him to provide a new version of theology. The writer believes that, unlike Mulla Sadra’s system of individual unity, which is in the process of change, his gradational system is a relatively complete one. It is noteworthy that there is a relative conformity between the fundamental principles of the graded unity of existence and those of the Christian process theology. Of course, as explained in the paper, the Sadrian school is much more efficient and accurate than process theology in understanding religious and comparative teachings. Therefore, in addition to posing the discussion of process theology and its new achievements concerning religious concepts, the present paper compares this school with Mulla Sadra’s system of gradational wisdom and explores it strengths and weaknesses.

The propositional language of Aristotelian logic concerning the existents of the world is based on his 10 categories. The habit of employing this language in everyday life and in the field of philosophy has resulted in the emergence of certain difficulties regarding some philosophical problems. From among them, we can refer to the problems related to essence or quiddity and the quality of acquiring the knowledge of existents in the outside world. The purpose of the present paper is to reveal the quality of the effect of this kind of language and, following it, essentialism in the realm of epistemology with special reference to two philosophers of existence in the East and West, Mulla Sadra and Martin Heidegger, respectively, concerning the terms “essence” and “quiddity”. Here, the writers conclude that, based on Heidegger’s philosophy and Mulla Sadra’s Transcendent Philosophy, particularly as reflected in the words of some of the commentators of the second school, the logic of essentialism and its tools are not capable of solving the problem of the conformity of mental forms with external realities and providing a justifiable criterion for defending this conformity.

Whenever reference is made to the process and structure of gaining knowledge, one may argue that the possibility of gaining it is rooted in one’s destiny. In fact, if someone absolutely doubts or has some suspicions concerning the possibility of gaining knowledge, he can never portray its process and structure. Given the fact that Descartes accepts the possibility of knowledge, the question is which strategies, processes, and stages he proposes for a knower to gain knowledge. Here, he appeals to intuition and inference and asks God not to deceive him. In his study and critique of Descartes’ theory of the process of knowledge, Misbah maintains that it is wrong to assume that the existence of nothing is as clear and certain as the existence of doubt, and even the existence of the skeptic has to be proved through the existence of doubt. He also rejects the innate ideas intended by Descartes. In this paper, the writers have explained Descartes’ theory of the process and structure of knowledge and reviewed it critically from Misbah’s point of view.

The Center for Compiling a Comprehensive History of Philosophy, affiliated with the Sadra Islamic Philosophy Research Institute and the Scientific Society of the History of Philosophy has brought a great number of researchers together since 2005 in order to compile a comprehensive history of wisdom and philosophy in Iran and in the world in the light of cultural and social events and incidents. The general policy dominating the process of compiling the history of philosophy here dictates a collaborative and cooperative activity in which a number of professors and authorities in the fields of archaeology, linguistics, history, art, gnosis, religion, and philosophy are participating. The present paper firstly analyzes the rules and principles governing the interdisciplinary approach in the field of science and highlights its differences from the disciplinary approach. Then, based on the documents published by this Center, it presents a picture of researchers’ group work in conformity with the norms of the interdisciplinary approach and portrays and judges their present and future activities. Finally, based on the nature of this approach and the scientific expectations it arouses, the writers make some recommendations to the researchers and professors involved in this huge project.

The specific unity or plurality of man is one of the problems that has often remained a marginal one and taken for granted as a presupposition in traditional philosophy. In the past, most Muslim philosophers defended the specific unity of man. However, the opponents of this idea posed the specific plurality of man using a demonstrative method. Of course, in the works of some of the advocates of the specific unity of man, such as Ibn Sina, there are some pieces of evidence attesting to this theory. This paper discusses and examines the curve of the evolution of the specific plurality and inequality of man with reference to some prominent and influential thinkers such as Ibn Sina, Suhrawardi, and Mulla Sadra. This curve has undergone some fluctuations in the philosophical and kalami schools of the world of Islam. Nevertheless, the process of its development entails the following theories: specific plurality of man at the level of evidence by Ibn Sina, graded specific unity (unequal equal human beings) by Suhrawardi, and three models of purely ontological and graded specific unity, the quiddative graded specific unity seeking ontological graded specific unity, and quiddative graded specific plurality seeking ontological graded specific unity by Mulla Sadra. It is noted that each of the three-fold Sadrian models exists in two apriori and aposteriori forms. The Sadrian specific plurality, because of its relying on solid supporting principles, having a variety of models, and entailing apriori and aposteriori forms of specific plurality, created a transformed atmosphere of inequality of human beings. In order to demonstrate the substantial difference between this type of plurality and the specific plurality of human beings before Mulla Sadra, the writer has referred to the former as human life-specific model.