محمد کاظم علمی سولا

Knowledge of non-existent ideas and information on them in most ontological systems and, in particular, in Mulla Sadra’s philosophy of principality of existence is challenging in view of the principle of correspondence. Besides, affirmative information on non-existent ideas is controversial on the basis of principle of presupposition. This article is seeking to show how Mulla Sadra, based on the principality of existence and concomitance of existence and thingness, can inform us of non-existent ideas while preserving the principle of presupposition and based on the principle of correspondence. By relying on the creative power of the mind and conceptualizing it, Mulla Sadra has done theorizations on non-existent ideas in two ways: (1) difference of the two predicates, and (2) lā batiyya[1] propositions. The second way in Mulla Sadra’s expression faces some questions, including: (1) what are lā batiyya propositions? (2) How is confirmation of the subject in lā bitiyya propositions? And (3) What is the criterion for expansion of lā batiyya propositions up to the propositions related to necessary [being]? These questions are discussed here. This article uses an analytical and interpretive method to show although Mulla Sadra has paid no attention to the method of ‘thing-itself’ in resolving the problem of information on non-existent ideas, the richness of his system, due to the belief in principality of existence and the soul’s intuitive knowledge in rational intuition as well as the creativity of the mind in conceptualization, can preserve the principle of presupposition and correspondence and explain the information on non-existent ideas successfully. In Mulla Sadra’s view, our soul has a power to make a title for the subject of predicative lā batiyya propositions, and the judgment goes on the title that refers to the individual impossibility outside the mind. Then, what is in the mind is not really an individual who needs correspondence; rather, it is merely a general concept; and when we make judgments, it is a judgment on something that is a possible being, with no problem. Thus, the impossible beings have neither an actual instance in the mind, nor a nature whose judgment spreads to external individuals.

The coexistence of religious followers is centuries old and these relationships have led to the development of friendships, the closeness of traditions and finding common ground. In the current era, dialogue between the great religions of the world is necessary. The increase in direct communication between people who have different world views, beliefs, cultures and customs is one of the factors that necessitates the need for inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogues, as a result of which people, in addition to followers, have different beliefs and world views. They understand different things, they define their position towards them. This article examines the possibility and solution of realizing inter-religious dialogue and considers the category of wisdom to be the most important and comprehensive component in inter-religious dialogue. The etymological investigation of wisdom in different religious traditions and its position and importance in religions, as well as research into its functions, shows that wisdom emphasizes the necessity of dialogue on the one hand and can be the best basis for dialogue on the other hand. The comprehensiveness of wisdom in the field of inter-religious dialogue is such that it can not only be the basis of dialogue, but it is also very efficient and effective in the method and manner of dialogue. After analyzing the necessity of dialogue and the possibility of realizing the dialogue of religions on the basis of wisdom, we come to the conclusion that this theological discourse will lead to a moral insight that the highest fruit of that is justice, the observance of which can lead to a fair judgment about another.

The thoughts of the contemporary French philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, which was formed in the context of philosophical hermeneutics and hermeneutic phenomenology, have a significant and reflective position among the scholars of this science. In the tradition of popular interpretation, the correct understanding and interpretation is the interpretation that has the most compliance with what the theologian intended, but Ricoeur considers the criterion of valid interpretation to be not the correspondence with the intended meaning of the author, which is more likely. He introduces this criterion provided by "mental probability logic". In explaining the correct interpretation of the text, he considers the two principles of "harmony and compatibility" and "completeness" to be essential in the interpretation. The present article seeks to examine the possibility of proposing these criteria regarding Sharia texts, considering their characteristics, with a descriptive-analytical approach and by collecting information in a library and document method. It seems that the "logic of possibilities" and the "principle of coherence and compatibility and the principle of completeness" can be used among the criteria mentioned in Shari'i texts.

One of the moral characteristics of humans is altruism. Whether or not a relationship can be established between this human trait and gender is a topic that has been investigated in this article. In this regard, after explaining the sexuality of the soul according to the principles of transcendental wisdom, including the unity of the soul and the body in all the corresponding stages of existence, as well as the expression of the unity and objectivity of the soul and powers in Mullah Sadra's view, the difference in powers between the two sexes, female and male, is pointed out and with the development of the meaning of intelligence from the perspective of Sadra wisdom, especially Mulla Sadra's different view on the faculty of fantasy, the difference in the meaning of intelligence between men and women has been achieved; As a woman's intelligence can be called an emotional intelligence, where empathy and sympathy are its main components, and Since there is a direct connection between altruism and emotions, the connection between altruism and gender is revealed. The necessity and importance of the present research is that by explaining the different moral virtues of women and men based on the principles accepted by Mulla Sadra, it has prevented the discriminatory and unfair valuation (calling each of them strong or weak) of the two sexes, which is one of the concerns of feminist philosophies todayThe present article is a fundamental effort that tries to explain the mentioned result with the the library method and by analyzing the basics of Sadra Wisdom.

This article is intended to raise two questions and to present a feasible solution to them. The first one is, “Did Mulla Sadra maintain hermeneutic circle in his philosophical thoughts? And the second is, “How did Mulla Sadra seek help from the Qur’an and intuitive perceptions in his impression of the principle of basīt al-ḥaqīqa by using the hermeneutic circle? This research first deals with the anatomy of the vocabulary of the questions in order to find a proper and clear answer, then it has pointed out the approaches of hermeneutic scholars and Mulla Sadra concerning the hermeneutic circle. Finally, Mulla Sadra’s method of applying the Qur’an and intuitive perception has been discussed within the framework of the hermeneutic circle and his achievement of the elegant principle of basīt al-ḥaqīqa in an epistemological system. In the present article, by testifying to the prominent thoughts of Mulla Sadra, the author seeks to reiterate this claim that in addition to the fact that he refers to the hermeneutic circle in his works, by using Qur’anic and intuitive knowledge as a premise, he has achieved new philosophical viewpoints by the hermeneutic circle method.

In the thought of Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi and Linda Zagzebski, two famous philosophers from two different eras and civilizations, we come across some components that lead us to a common approach. The value of knowledge, according to both philosophers, is a result of the value of processes, without which philosophy is doomed to fail. The three common necessities in the philosophy of Suhrawardi and Zagzebski are: (1) The necessity of internal elevation, which upholds the qualitative and internal process of knowledge by trying to strengthen the human will. (2) The necessity of unifying wisdom. According to this necessity, a person thinks about the unity of human opinion and experience by trusting in his/her thought and other intellectual traditions. Moreover, to reach self-cultivation and also to understand and elevate wisdom, a person requires personal intuition and creativity in each era. (3) The necessity of narrative, which makes the development of philosophical intentions dependent on the genius in thinking, the genius in creating motivation, and also the return to intellectual and moral patterns. With a new look at the factors of knowledge promotion, this research has addressed some epistemologically neglected topics that the spiritual and epistemological life of philosophy depends on it.

The approach of Descartes and his subsequent philosophical tradition to consciousness did have epistemological consequences. The distinction between subject and object, and the question of how the mind and body relate, the entanglement of the mind in its ideas that led to the problem of “egocentric predicament,” the problem of the identity of the perceptual object, skepticism, and the issue of valuation regarding the gap between the mind and the object are some consequences of this approach. Consequently, alternative approaches have been proposed by philosophers to avoid such consequences. Among these approaches is phenomenology with the narratives of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology with its intentionality, Heidegger’s doctrine of “being-in-the-world” and Merleau-Ponty’s idea of conscious bodies tried to explain the mechanism and characteristics of consciousness. The present article seeks to examine the problems of the Cartesian-European epistemological system, to show how to deal with these problems, and finally to analyze and critique the characteristics of each approach to see whether these alternative approaches could have managed to solve these problems or not.

In the ta’wīl (spiritual hermeneutic) of existence and text, facts that are hidden from the external view in the interpretation of the world and text are brought to the fore. As a philosopher, Mulla Sadra has well-founded foundations in ontology that have influenced his ta’wīl style, these foundations can be regulated and the purpose of this article is to deduce these rules and show their effect on the ta’wīl of text. The research method is Descriptive-analytical and based on Sadra's ontology and deals with the inference and investigation of five main rules and several sub-rules (which can be traced in the sub-branches of the main rules), and by mentioning examples of the ta’wīl of text, it shows the effect of ontological rules on the ta’wīl of text. The main rules extracted are the reference of essence to being, ta’wil capacities in being (levels of being), appearance, the ontological basis, compatibility of worlds in ta’wil and reference of plurality to unity. This article shows the philosophical logic of the ta’wil of text, it is considered a ta’wil theory of being, in the form of rules.

Cognitive psychology is one of the important branches of psychology in which it deals with important concepts related to perception, language, comprehension and how information is processed. Since Mullā Ṣadrā is a thinker who has had many opinions about man; therefore, it is possible to extract his views in various fields of psychology. In this regard, this article deals with the issue of imagination as one of the important concepts in cognitive psychology and has shown that the concepts of common sense (sensus communis), imagination, fear, memory, modifying (faculty of disposal), imaginative (faculty of imagination) and cogitative faculty places in the perceptual system of imagination and determines the mechanism of each.

The old attempt of philosophy to understand the meaning of unity and return the plurality of the world to a unified matter has a long record which can be traced to the philosophy of ancient Greek especially philosophy of Heraclitus. His notion of unity is different from the understanding of his previous philosophers of unity. His view of arche is a transition from material to non-material matter; the manifestation of this point is Logos. Logos unifies the material and non-material matter and the whole universe. The theory of unity of being has been noticed by mystics and especially Ibn-Arabi, but Molla-Sadra is the first philosopher who presents a rational and deductive presentation of this theory in a philosophical system. Heraclitus and Molla-Sadra both try to present a united existential picture of the world. Their ideas have some common points along with some differences. This article tries to study the bases of unity of being from the perspectives of the two philosophers and compare their commons and differences.

Many of the Muslim philosophers view human free-will as among the most significant means of knowing God; that is because they believe that man is similar to God in his essence, attributes, and actions and thus knowing human free-will and its limits would clarify his role in the world of being as well as his relation to God. Mulla Sadra has stated this discourse in a coherent and innovative way based on the principle of the ontology of genuineness, gradation, and oneness of being and ultimately has ingeniously explained the theory of intermediate position (amr-i bain al-amrain) through the theory of individual oneness. Similarly, in respect to explaining human free-will, Gazzaniga, as a leading researcher in cognitive neuroscience and the study of the neural basis of mind, believes that human free-will is made up by the brain's "interpreter" and freedom of choice is attained for man through interaction in society and environment, but at the same time humans are responsible beings. In this paper, first, each of these thinkers' principles of thoughts is elucidated and then, after explaining the similarities and differences of their viewpoints, both viewpoints are analyzed and evaluated.

Every philosopher's viewpoint about the subject of philosophy is the axis of his philosophical activity. Throughout the history of thought, various subjects have been dealt with by philosophers. It is well known that Ludwig Wittgenstein has challenged the subject of philosophy and revolted against the traditional philosophy before himself. Also, in his later thought, a proposition could not have a universal and essential meaning. In this research, an attempt has been made to examine this different view in the case of interpreting the subject of philosophy, comparing it with the viewpoint of Ibn Ṣīnā as one of the greatest traditional-Islamic philosophers. It seems that "Existence qua Existence" as the subject of philosophy, based on the epistemological assumptions of Ibn Ṣīnā's intellectual framework, faces challenges with the philosophical views of both early and late Wittgenstein. Islamic philosophy needs to expose itself to modern philosophical questions more than before.

The ideas of contemporary French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, formed in the context of philosophical hermeneutics and hermeneutic phenomenology, have a remarkable and reflective place. By presenting “Hermeneutical Arc” from a distance of “hermeneutic circle”, he attributes the process of interpretation to the process of “Explanation, Understanding, Appropriation”. Ricoeur, in the face of the text, seeks “Appropriation, Self Understanding, Discovering Text intent” as understanding aims. The present paper looks for to explore the possibility of laying out these goals for the religious texts according to their characteristics, using a descriptive-analytical approach and gathering information through library and documentary methods. It seems that, based on the principles accepted in the Islamic interpretive tradition and by Relying on principles such as: the author's modern understanding of the text, the conformity of the textual meaning with the intentional meaning and the objective truth that produces some form of author-centered text, Ricoeur's intended purposes can be furthered in the religious texts.

Dream has always been an attractive issue for the people in various erras and psychologists have investigated it a lot in the past. However, most of the issues relating to dreams such as its nature and the reality of prophetic dreams are still ambiguous. Mulla Sadra as a philosopher and also as a psychologist has relatively considered it in his scientific works. This study, after reviewing the litrature and extracting the philosophic foundations of sleep and its psychological issues, has shown that given the Mulla Sadra's thoughts including principality of existence, gradation of existence, substantial motion, bodily origination, spiritual subsistence and consequently two-dimensionality of human as well as Mulla Sadra's belief in human authority, an appropriate structure is created for difining dream, types of dreams and source of dreams. It should be noted that though a number of Mulla Sadra's opinions regarding material dimension of human and considering one of the dimensions of human relatively corresponds to psychology, one can extract exact ideas and opinions regarding dreams and particularly prophetic dreams from the perspective of Mulla Sadra due to lack of existing immateriality in contemporary psychology.

Throughout history, human beings have always explored their existential angles in various dimensions and ways. The interaction of the soul and the body is one of the issues that has been introduced from philosophy to the empirical sciences with the development of various sciences such as Cognitive Science. Mulla Sadra has answered this question in an innovative way by proposing the corporeal origination of soul on the basis of the principles of the gradation in existence and the substantial motion. Gazzaniga, as a neuroscientist, is also trying to answer the question of how the interacts of brain / mind by studying the brain and its structure in the form of a Emergentism perspective. In this article, first the Emergentism perspective is expressed, then it is attempted to provide a reading from the perspective of Mulla Sadra in the framework of theory of Emergentism and to compare it with the emergentism perspective of Gazzaniga, and finally, after comparison and analysis, their views are evaluated.

This research seeks to answer the question with reference to the fundamental position of definition in Socrates and Aristotle's thought: what are the characteristics and components of the definition for these two philosophers? As the research is a fundamental one, this paper examines the features and components of this essay by referring to the main sources of the two philosophers in response to this fundamental question. Therefore, at first, the authors bring into consideration the most prominent feature of a logical definition, that is "generality", and, then, examines the components of the definition as viewed by the two thinkers. Ultimately, the two thinkers` views on the fundamental component of definition among the four causes have been studied. And finally, with regard to the Socrates` differences of words in Plato`s various dialogues, his disagreement with Aristotle has been surveyed and criticized.

Also Plato's has not used explicitly the title of the symbol in his philosophical debate but by concentrating on his works we can grasp the meaning of the symbol in his philosophy through his application of symbol. For he considers the symbol as a presentation of the symbolized. The importance of the theory of idea which is the core of Plato's ontological theories, plays a central role insemantics of the symbol so that the relation of the symbol and the symbolized is based upon the relation of the copy and its participation with the real, and participation means presentation. So in Plato the analysis of the meaning of the symbol means that there are symbolic relations in the levels of real existing world; so that the sensibles are the symbols of ideas, and ideas are the symbols of the principle of the good (i.e. the god in Plato's philosophical system). By explaining God's position in the existence, and the relation of all beings with Him, it becomes clear that God is the principles of a unity who never becomes a symbol for anything, and knowing and describing His essence is possible merely through knowing the symbols.

One of the most important philosophical discussions is on the notion of “I” and consciousness. Mulla Sadra, like other Islamic philosophers, attributes the notion of “I” and consciousness to the soul, but contrary to earlier philosophers, he tries to present a monist explanation for the body mind relationship to solve the problems arising for the earlier philosophers because of their dualist explanation for the body mind relationship. For him, human being is a moving substance, who transcends from a wicker mode of being named “body” to a stronger mode of being called “abstract soul”. While according to neurosciences, consciousness is attributed to the brain, and “I” comes out of consciousness. But neuroscientists have not yet presented a complete explanation of the consciousness. Hence they justify their theory by using the idea that brain damages are the cause of certain changes in consciousness or of losing it. But, since the Transcendent Theosophy does not deny the role of the brain in the process of consciousness, it does not consider their reason sufficient to justify their theory. According to the Transcendent Theosophy, though the interactions of the brain is preparing the ground for the consciousness, it cannot be merely reduced to the matter (brain); consciousness or “I” is an immaterial issue which unifies various perceptions, and is able to analyze and compare them, while in neurosciences, there is no explanation for such an issue.

Plato and Mulla Sadrā have never used the terms opinions but we may conceptualize symbolism in the ground of their philosophical thoughts with platonic and Mulla Sadrā's views based on narrative principle and with respect to their philosophical foundations. Based on the significance of ideology theory and quality of Plato's intended imaginations, it may be concluded that a symbol is in imperative thought which has got a kind of specific resemblance based on "enjoyment" relation from the transcendent reality of narration. Pondering upon the quality of narration emanated from Mulla Sadrā's philosophical views, a symbol may be considered as an issue which is narrated from a symbolized issue as its reason and a is regarded as a companion identity and a real shadow-like similarity of its imaginations. Utilizing a philosophical analysis method for explaining the nature of symbol in these philosophers' views, a new reading to the position of art in their philosophical system is presented which is based on the analysis of their ideology to the nature of symbolism and is based on a kind of separation in arts according to their imaginations as (non)-symbolic. Such a reading could be considered as the basis for influential art in the epistemic elevation. A symbolistic analysis of these two philosophers' thoughts shows that while their intellectual foundations diverge from each other, there is convergence in their views on symbolism and its expansion in the area of art which depicts a kind of development from the philosophical dimension to the position of art.

Memory is a potency which makes man to be able to fix and to deposit those data which are being grasped through senses, and to use them whenever are needed. That is why our data remain unchanged and we can clearly remember our past. For Mulla Sadra the memory is unchanged because it is an abstract entity. Based upon his theory, all corporeal entities are constantly moving. Therefore if the memory is corporeal, it has to be subject to the change. But neuroscientists do not consider all motions as change. So for them the motions at the level of subatomic or atomic world do not make any change in the biological world. Even if it is considered to be a change by transcendent theosophy, but for neuroscientists only those changes at the level of neuron sells can change the memory, thus they attribute the fixity of the memory to the fixity of coding the genes and accordingly coding the neurons, and if any kind of confusion occurs in this function, we will lose our memory. Therefore for them the memory is corporeal, and in spite of being so, in normal conditions no change occurs in its deposited data. Thus to prove the abstractness of the memory we have to utilize other reasons.

Plato in his philosophy school offers a special system for universe based on relationship between shadow or photograph and the true being. In this way, he talks about a transcendental being that is the origin of Good (God in his philosophical system) and is beyond existence. By paying attention to position of the origin of the Good in the universe and analyzing the quality of "benefitting" it becomes clear that true existence is confined to it and the other beings are only reflections and shadows of it so that we cannot consider any independence for other beings even "the ideas" and therefore, Plato's ontology circles around a single truth. Mullah Sadra also by offering his final theory "personal pantheism" confines beings to one single being (God) and considers the other beings as His manifestations, since multiplicity of the appearances does not contradict unity of the truth. The present paper tries to discover the similarities and differences of Plato and Mullah Sadra's approach to the true existence based on their different anthological ideas.

 “I” or “self” is intertwined with self-consciousness in Sadrian philosophy. The emergence of “I” begins with developing an awareness of the self and then develops, grows, and attains different levels based on the same awareness. In this paper, the writers aim to explore the growth of “I” or “personality” based on Mulla Sadra’s philosophical principles. In its technical sense, “personality”, which is created in the light of training and other influential factors, is formed in the domain of the transcendent and grown “I”. This is because “I”, from the very beginning, is an individual and a particular ontological identity. However, personality, which mainly represents an individual’s voluntary attributes and features, appears at specific stages of a person’s process of development and correct intellectual education. Following a specific analytic method, the present paper examines the process of appropriate growth, which mainly takes place after puberty.  

Objectivity is among the most profound problems contemplated by philosophers. Both Mulla Sadra and Kant, as Islamic and Western philosophers, have profoundly addressed this problem. The present research tries to show that the problems around knowledge stated by Mulla Sadra can be more logically understood through principles of his ontology (i.e. graduation of being and the particularly of the human soul), and through his own initiatives such as creativity of the soul and its substantial motion, as well as the unity of knower and the known. Accordingly, we then follow the implications and results of this ontological solution and will compare it with Kant’s epistemological solution.

The present article explains the notion of symbol and metaphor in Ricoeur's philosophy and tries to consider the relation between them in his whole philosophical perspective to answer the following questions: whether this two notions are the same or each one belongs to completely different realms? What kind of relation is there between tham? whether there is any conceptual or functional relation between them? How Ricoeur utilizes anyone of these notions to extend his hermeneutics?
While explaining these notions, Ricoeur tries to characterize anyone of them through the other, and gets some kind of similarity between the two which can be a source of relation and extension of their meaning. With refering to the linguistic feature of the symbol and metaphor, and thus their interpretative possibility, he thinks a common function between them in the realms of epistemology and ontology.
The present research by concentrating on the discussion of the symbol and metaphor in Ricoeur's hermeneutics can have a profound influence in total understanding of his hermeneutics and in grasping its distinction from the hermeneutics of the other philosophers.

The present article studies Paul Ricoeur and Mulla Sadra's views on imagination, particularly its influential role in knowledge. Though their philosophies differ in principle, they share certain ideas in common. Ricoeur, contemporary philosopher and hermeneut, utilizes semiotics, linguistics, structuralism, and so on, to enrich hermeneutics. Language, thus, gets a central role in his philosophy. The basic difference of Ricoeur’s idea on imagination which distinguishes him from Mulla Sadra is that ‘language’ is used as a basis to explain imagination; he explains the role of imagination in knowledge through language. But Mulla Sadra does not directly deals with language, but considers act of imagination in constituting knowledge as an act of certain faculty of the soul. But in spite of this basic difference, both philosophers consider imagination as a mediator between external world and internal world of the mind and both explain this possibility by the notion of integration of two different issues.