جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه « معنای زندگی » در نشریات گروه « فلسفه و کلام »

The meaning of life is one of the most important concepts in the history of philosophy, which has preoccupied many philosophers. In modern era, the traditional concept of meaning has lost its credibility due to the explosion in every field of knowledge and technology, and subsequently, the migration of the Gods. Martin Heidegger, as the most important philosopher of the Twentieth Century, focused his attention on the meaning of life in modern thought in the absence of metaphysical Gods. In the first period of his intellectual gestation, he sought to dream up a meaning for life by rejecting any kind of idealistic approach based on the concept of his fundamental ontology.  Therefore, the aim of this study was to analyze the hermeneutic phenomenology of Dasein in order to get  a  better understanding of the meaning of authentic existence, which is the main mission of  early Heidegger's philosophy. Heidegger's thought and his fundamental ontology focused on the human beings as Dasein. Heidegger believed that the truth of existence could be understood by  Dasein because the existence could be observed in the human beings. Accordingly, to obtain the meaning of life, Heidegger unravels the mystery of the fundamental structures of Dasein which are related to each other, including being-in-the-world, fear and the consciousness of death using his hermeneutic conception of language. He concluded that Dasein could obtain an authentic life as a meaningful life using the consciousness of death of and freedom from the Daesin's domination through free choices. However, Heidegger believed that the will is not  the only solution, and also  we should always open up the new perspective in this regard  that existence itself provides for us.

The meaningful relationship between life and human sciences and its impact on the direction of humanities are one of the fundamental issues that has been less considered by thinkers, despite their immense importance. Of course, the debate about the meaning, absurdity of life and the nature of meaning of life are one of the topics that has always been the subject of discussion and its explanation is still the concern of philosophers and thinkers; each of them has tried to find a way to make life meaningful as per their own particular foundations, thus to supposedly illustrate an irreversible future for mankind. On the other hand, scholars in the humanities believe that they have employed their scientific efforts to pursue a better life for humanity. However, very few of them have directed their scientific endeavors towards a proper orientation of the sciences. Among the few insightful philosophers whose scientific efforts can be interpreted in the direction of elucidating the meanings of life, the late Allameh Misbah Yazdi stands out. Having clarified "the meaning of life" in his view, this paper aims to explain its impact on the necessary orientation of the humanities towards realizing the human meaning of life according to the monotheistic insight.

One of the fundamental concerns of humanity since its inception has been the question of the meaning of life. Meaningfulness has two connotations: purposefulness and value. Certainly, the meaning of the meaning of life depends on the type of worldview and perspective of each philosopher. The present research seeks to examine the answer to the question of whether pleasure is related to meaningfulness or not. Does pleasure require pleasure to achieve the meaning of life? This research compares and contrasts the theories of Aristotle and Mulla Sadra on the relationship between pleasure and the meaning of life. In this article, the descriptive-analytical method is used to analyze the concepts. The most important philosophical bases that distinguish and differ between these two philosophers are the question of equivocation of existence. Aristotle does not believe in the equivocation of existence. From Aristotle's point of view, pleasure and happiness are a constant for all human beings and he does not believe in different levels of pleasure. He considers happiness to be limited to this world and exclusive to the rational part of man. He considers the way to reach meaning to be limited to the realm of virtue. However, Mulla Sadra, based on the principle of equivocation of existence, believes that pleasure has different levels, with intellectual pleasure being superior to sensory pleasure and being higher in terms of rank and existential dignity than the world of sense and matter. Mulla Sadra considers happiness to be related to the physical and spiritual dimensions, so Mulla Sadra believes in comprehensive happiness. He considers the way to reach meaning to be wisdom, imagination, and inner forces. He considers the way to reach happiness to be a human voluntary action. He considers the true example of happiness to be in the afterlife.

The relationship between art and ethics is one of the most important and fundamental topics in the discussion of giving meaning to life, which is as old as the history of philosophy. In the meantime, existentialist philosophers have dealt with this issue more carefully. The purpose of this research is to examine the views of two existentialist philosophers, namely Nietzsche and Sartre, in relation to the moral function of theater art and its role in human excellence, in order to finally answer the most important biological problem of mankind, i.e. finding meaning for life.

In the end, a conclusion was reached that both philosophers have defined the moral act in relation to the act of creation and creativity. By referring to the ancient tragedy and subsequent theater, they present a method of practical ethics, which ultimately leads to creating a sense of commitment and agreement in life.

Enhancing human capacity to adapt and remain resilient in the face of natural and man-made disasters has long been a central concern. This article explores the relationship between practical monotheism and social resilience, drawing on the thoughts of Ayatollah Misbah Yazdi. Employing a library-based research approach with descriptive and analytical methods, the article examines how practical manifestations of monotheism can strengthen societal resilience. According to Ayatollah Misbah’s works, three key areas are identified in this respect: (1) constructive interaction within society, (2) promotion of moral virtues and human values, and (3) emphasis on the meaning and purpose of life. Constructive interaction, grounded in monotheism, fosters social resilience by promoting societal unity, respect for individual and collective rights, and the dignity of the underprivileged. Theological contributions associated with monotheism further contribute to resilience. By fostering hope in God’s grace and encouraging societal members to embrace truth, patience, and mercy, these contributions build resilience. Finally, focusing on the meaning and purpose of life within a monotheistic framework, which includes recognizing God’s judgment, destiny, and wisdom in shaping the world, provides a foundation for resilience by acknowledging the limitations of worldly knowledge and the certainty of the afterlife.

According to Schopenhauer, awareness of death is based on Knowing the desire and abandoning the desire and self-willed death or canceling the desire for immortality. He denies any individuality in immortality. Therefore, his theory does not satisfy the desire for survival in man. According to him, awareness of death is achieved through intuition. Nietzsche looks from death to life. It is death that gives man the power to live. The ideal life of each person is determined by his characteristics. He wants man to live creatively and not passively. Nietzsche is a follower of individual natural ethics, but in explaining his belief, he ignores aspects of natural ethics that are based on things other than the struggle for survival. He also ignores the role of environmental factors and education in creating superhumans. What he introduces as a solution for the meaning of life requires having pure wisdom, while the common people lack it, therefore it does not work for everyone. Awareness of death is produced by all the natural forces. For him, the knowledge of death is of the type of understanding.

Heterophenomenology is a term that Daniel Dennett coined against Husserl's phenomenology, and its purpose is to study the problem of consciousness from a third-person perspective, as it is common in natural sciences. Dennett criticizes Husserl's phenomenology due to its reliance on introspection and first-person perspective, as well as the impossibility of creating consensus. The result of this is skepticism, solipsism, and relativism. According to Dennett, the only appropriate and agreeable method for studying consciousness is to focus from a third-person point of view on the processes that go on in the brain and are not available through introspection and from a first-person point of view. Accordingly, Dennett proposes the model of multiple drafts in opposition to the Cartesian Theater to investigate consciousness, according to which all types of perception, thinking, and mental activity in the brain are accompanied by multi-directional processes of interpretation, description, and development within sensory data. In this article, the claim is defended that the criterion of essentialism to distinguish introspection from the phenomenological method, considering Dennett's opposition to any essentialist approach to studying consciousness, is not effective. In addition, the priority of the third-person approach leaves no room for a phenomenological science based on the third-person perspective.

The exploration of the meaning of life remains a central concern for contemporary humans. While Heidegger did not explicitly address this matter, his opinions can be discerned from his writings. He posited that modern humanity grapples with a form of nihilism, and the remedy lies in a return to authentic existence. In the later part of his life, Heidegger emphasized the importance of preventing dominance over nature and promoting respect for it as the criterion for the meaning of life. One significant limitation of Heidegger's perspective is the neglect of the role of goals and purpose in imparting meaning to life. In contrast, religious views provide a framework depicting a perfect, transcendent, and eternal goal for human life. This divine goal can guide individuals toward the pinnacle of meaning in life.

The meaning of life is one of the most important concerns of modern Man and one of the fate-making problems among contemporary philosophers, psychotherapists, and moral philosophers. The present study investigates the meaning of life in the view of Mullā Ṣadrā, as a Muslim philosopher, and Irvin Yalom, as a contemporary Western existentialist psychotherapist. The focal question of this paper is what the cosmological and anthropological foundations of the meaning of life in the views of Mullā Ṣadrā and Yalom are. The findings of this study indicate that God appears with beautiful and glorious manifestations as the end of being, which grants meaning to being, and Man is present with their ontological gradedness, immateriality, and plurality. By contrast, in Yalom’s philosophy, the centrality of God is denied; the world is void of meaning, and it is Man who must grant meaning to life. Therefore, it can be said that one deals with the unveiling of meaning in Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy and the creation of meaning in Yalom’s philosophy. Regarding the problem of the meaning of life, Mullā Ṣadrā’s approach is teleological and divine, while Yalom’s approach is non-teleological and atheistic.

Thaddeus Metz has tried to show that the meaning in life, like morality and happiness, is one of the normative categories of life and emphasizes the distinction between the meaning in life and happiness. According to Metz's definition, happiness consists of "positive experiences" and pleasure is basically connected with happiness. Why is happiness different from meaningfulness and what are their differences? These are the main questions that this article addresses. By searching in Metz's works, we can provide some witnesses and reasons why Metz makes a distinction between happiness and meaningfulness. According to Metz's view, happiness is related to the animal realm of the individual, while meaningfulness is related to the human realm, so that although pleasure can increase happiness, but it will not necessarily lead to meaningfulness increase. He makes six distinctions between happiness and meaningfulness: 1. The source of meaning is "relational", but the source of happiness is "intrinsic"; 2. The bearer of meaning is "action", but the bearer of happiness is "sensation"; 3. The greater impact of happiness from “luck” than meaningfulness; 4. The desire to "continue" the state of happiness, wanting "esteem" to be meaningful; 5. The possibility of happiness, only "during the lifetime" in contrast to the possibility of meaningfulness "posthumously"; 6. bias towards the future v lack of bias. Although Metz has mentioned six important distinctions between happiness and meaning, his statement is not comprehensive and other distinctions can be added to Metz's list.

In the age of modernity, meaninglessness has taken over the soul of the civilized human being. It has caused moral values, which human beings have always regarded as metaphysics values, to become worthless and lose their meaning. Therefore, the study and explanation of the undeniable necessity of the importance of meaning in life have become particularly important and have led thinkers to come to a consensus on it. Existentialist philosophers, meanwhile, paid more attention to the nature of the subject, which is concerned with human quidditas. Via descriptive-comparative study, this article has attempted to give a response to the most important human biological problem today through the role of rebellion in providing meaning to life while examining the views of two philosophers of existentialism. Nietzsche and Camus try to show that theism and moral values lead to emptiness and understanding the emptiness of the world leads to rebellion. Rejecting moral values, Nietzsche refers to rebellion as a kind of treatment in which man no longer considers suffering worthless, but considers it as a new basis of morality that leads to a new understanding of pleasure and its place in life. Camus also rejects traditional ethics and relying on the concept of rebellion, he established a new morality from which a kind of pleasure is obtained, resulting in simultaneous acceptance of the world with all its good and bad. Denying God, both Nietzsche and Camus see rebellion as the only way to salvation. In their view, rebellion combats nihilism by instilling a spirit of commitment in human beings and training active human beings, and ultimately leads to a pure pursuit of life in this world.

This article aims to reassess the concepts of power, resistance, and subjectivity by examining the ideas of Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault. At first glance, it seems that these two thinkers, rooted in different philosophical and theoretical foundations, are in opposition to each other, making a dialogue between their perspectives seemingly impossible. However, this article proposes an alternative approach by highlighting the common grounds and commonalities in their deconstruction of power. Moreover, it argues that their political views can be seen as aligned and complementary, leading to a deepening and development of each other's ideas and the creation of new political approaches. Thus, the central questions addressed in this article are: what forms of agency emerge for the contemporary subject as result of the deconstruction of power in thought of Arendt and Foucault? How does power act as a source of resistance while opening up new possibilities for the subject? The main finding of this study is that, in contrast to traditional and modern interpretations, power in the works of these thinkers is seen as a positive, creative, and productive concept. Based on this understanding, resistance and alternative forms of empowerment for the subject emerge. It should be noted, however, that Arendt’s and Foucault’s interpretation of resistance agency and power may differ due to the primacy of political and social issues in their respective theories.

.The main problem of the article is to examine the relationship between the three concepts of time, life and moral life, and the goal is to answer the question, what is the philosophical relationship between these three concepts? In this article, it has been tried to prove with the descriptive and analytical method that the relationship between time and the meaning of life can be analyzed and explained only in the third angle, which is moral life. Because the truth of man is nothing but existence and all perfectional attributes are a way of existence, but the essence of existence, the stronger and more noble the existence, the higher the perfectional attributes will be. Also, moral life has an ontological approach. And man is a fluid and changing being. It is that one order of existence goes towards a more complete order with its essential movement to reach the goal of elimination, that is, to reach happiness or destruction in the presence of God. Acquiring moral virtues over time and in accordance with the essential movement of the human soul over time is a part of moral life, and moral life is the same period of life; sometimes short and sometimes long; It is used to achieve the goal and acquire moral virtues to beautify it and achieve the goal; Consequently, it takes time to gain purpose or meaning in life.

In Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai’s view, primordial nature or ‘fiṭrah’ appears to be the cornerstone for philosophical analyses related to the human being. In this paper, using a descriptive-analytical method, Tabatabai’s theory of fiṭrah has been explained, and some of its implications in terms of the meaning of life have been inferred. Then, its impact on the conceptual analysis of ‘meaning’ in the different theories of the meaning of life, especially ones that are based on ‘purpose’ and ‘value,’ is investigated. The result of this study shows that Tabatabai defines fiṭrah as the unique creation of each creature. Additionally, value and purpose are conceptual components of each other, that is, a human being who gives meaning to his/her life by a purpose, finds that purpose necessarily valuable, and on the other hand, by any valuable thing he/she is going to find meaning, inevitably considers it somehow as his/her purpose. Moreover, purpose and value cannot be conceptually analyzed without the theory of fiṭrah. This means, according to Tabatabai, every purpose and every valuable matter, regardless of their instances, are necessarily defined in accordance with human fiṭrah. This point indicates the importance and necessity of the ontological discussions about human fiṭrah, its requirements and its place in existence, for adopting a theory in the meaning of life.

In "Value and Virtue in a World Without God," Weillenberg considers naturalism as an atheistic account of the universe. He first introduces the meaninglessness of life in the absence of God with four narrations and then challenges it with the help of three perspectives. He then goes on to find ways to ontologically base morality on religion and tries to show that these ways are dead ends. In this book he does not clarify his alternative view, but in the book "Strong Ethics", it is revealed that he is a naturalist. In response to the question why should one live morally? It wants to show that there is a possibility of moral motivation apart from God, although God can also be a good supporter of morality. In introducing virtues into his proposed ecosystem, he is no longer content with merely presenting a positive view, and seeks to show that some virtues are born in the absence of God, or at least have a deeper meaning. The most important criticism of him is the identification of theism with being a Christian.

The relation between art and life has always been a most important problem that philosophers have paid attention to. Martin Heidegger is one of the great philosophers that art has a central role in his thought, and so in this essay we explored the relation between art and life in his thought and by way of philosophical analysis, hermeneutics and discourse analysis attempted to find that what relation between art and life Heidegger believe in.Heidegger elevates art to a way of human salvation and believes that art can help us in the face of our existential problems. And, for him, this salvation can only be done by great art, that it can fulfill its responsibilities to human life.The second task of this essay was to discover and enumerate these tasks from the heart of Heidegger's philosophy of art. The art seems to have the following duties towards human life: opening the world, making it holy, understanding how to live, creating a people, freedom, taking it out of everyday life, making ontological differences, and giving birth to a meaningful world out of a meaningless and mysterious context.Finally, the third task we dealt with was how, in Heidegger's view, art could accomplish these tasks and in a sense save men. According to him, art can accomplish the tasks by thematizing, repeating, showing the other side of things, providing a passionate experience, paying attention to details, showing the simple and basic lines of the world and distancing oneself from things.

Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Buber have considered the human being, his existential issues, and anxieties in their philosophical issues. Among these topics is the subject of the "other" and "meaning of life". Sartre's views appear in the position of an atheist thinker about the "other" and meaning in life in two approaches. First, his radical view of the "other" is so pessimistic, and he calls it "hell", and the relationship with the "other" is based on "conflict". At this point, life is absurd and meaningless. He takes a moderate approach in his later views, believing that he has to invent a meaning for life and that the "other" can play an essential role in this meaning. Buber is a divine existentialist and sees the "other" and "meaning of life" in a deep bond. In his mind, the pursuit of authentic communication and the discovery of the meaning of life can only be possible when there is "Thou". Of course, Thou has a hierarchy, and the highest "you" is "eternal", and in the shadow of his grace, the meaning of life is discovered.