A Criticism and Investigation of the Quiddity of Religious Science from the Perspective of Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi

The view of Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi about religious science is studied and investigated in this article. This investigation is done in three steps considering the quiddity of science, quiddity of religion and quiddity of religious science. In the first step, his view on the quiddity of science, which is called subject-based, is discussed. There are some criticisms posed such as moving back and forth between having a subject-based and problem-based view, paying little attention to the method and purpose of science and ignoring the effect of a scholar’s view on the definition of science. In the second step, his non-encyclopedic approach to religion is considered as a positive point. And in the third step regarding religious science, two points are seen as the remains of the positivistic view in his approach: his definite distinction between descriptive sciences and prescriptive sciences, and considering descriptive sciences concrete and neutral. The result of this view, which is disregarding descriptive sciences in religious science and restricting religious science to prescriptive sciences, is also criticized.