مصطفی جهان فکر

The role and effect of 'love' in the volitional action of the free-willed agent is an undeniable fact. However, the precise understanding of this fact is dependent on going through some stages including the philosophical analysis of the truth of love. Allamah Tabatabaei is one of the few philosophers who have sought to analyze love. In this article, our goal is to explain and investigate Allamah's view about love using an analytical-critical approach. In Allamah's view, "love is an existential relationship between the lover and the beloved, and such a relationship is dependent on the two parties". From this, he concludes that love is not, due to its nature, dependent on conscience and awareness, and that in some instances, its existence depends on the existence of conscience is the feature of the aforementioned instances. Similarly, Allamah maintains that love is a gradational truth that is running in all beings. He also believes that every 'thing' loves itself. The idea that the truth of love is not dependent on conscience and awareness is defective. Love is something dependent on the lover, and is sometimes the same as him. Allamah's definition of love does not apply to love of 'self', and his analysis is unable to explain love of 'self'. Rather, such an image of love necessitates the denial of love of 'self'. Of course, love is a truth added to self, and in those cases wherein the beloved is existentially contrary to the lover, the existence of love is not dependent on the objective existence of the beloved; rather, acquisition of some sort of awareness of the beloved is enough for acquisition of love.

The principle of non-contradiction is, according to many scholars, the most central principle in human knowledge, whose negation would lead to the closure of sciences. Since long ago, some paradoxes have been put forward in refutation of this principle. Resolving those paradoxes is necessary for defending the validity of human knowledge and removing the sophistic doubts. In the present article, we have attempted to resolve, through the analysis of the reality of truth, some important paradoxes and show that these paradoxes do not negate the abovementioned principle. Regarding the Liar Paradox, while offering a solution for it, we have argued that the paradox lacks the necessary conditions to be called “true” or “false”. We have also showed that how Grelling’s paradox is resolved by considering contradiction of predicates. The paradoxes of Russell and Counter are indeed resulted from the confusion between “universal and general” as well as “validity and truth”. Thus, none of the paradoxes negate the principle of non-contradiction.

The principle of non-contradiction is the most basic principle of human knowledge. Denying it will lead to denial of all sciences and falling into sophistry and skepticism. In the present article, we have attempted to recognize the nature of contradiction and some of its less-known aspects which may, if neglected, lead to numerous sophistries. By a precise analysis of contradiction, we conclude that the reality of contradiction is nothing but "agreement and exclusion of negation and affirmation belonging to a single affair", and this is rationally absurd both in agreement and exclusion. Although the abovementioned principle is axiomatic, reaching the dependent of contradictory statement may – in proportion to what is negated or affirmed – become complicated and, as the result, discerning contradiction will become difficult. Generally speaking, the principle of non-contradiction has three other branches each of which is applicable in a certain sphere depending on its belonging. Sometimes, what is negated or affirmed are the individual essences and sometimes what the concepts say of their instances and sometimes the truth and falsity of propositions. We have called those forms of contradiction "contradiction of essences", "contradiction of qualities" and "contradiction of propositions" respectively, and investigated the related precepts.