‘Allāmah Ṭabāṭabā’ī's Epistemological Theory on "The Reduction of Acquired Knowledge to the Knowledge by Presence" – A New Reading

‘Allāmah Ṭabāṭabā’ī has explicitly stated in his various works that "acquired knowledge reduces and refers back to the knowledge by presence". Based on his different words and statements, two readings of this reduction of acquired knowledge to the knowledge by presence can be presented: 1. According to one reading, the source and origin of the abstraction of any acquired knowledge is considered to be knowledge by presence. 2. According to another reading, it is emphasized that acquired knowledge is figurative and compulsorily subjective, and thus, every acquired knowledge is actually knowledge by presence. In this paper, after explaining both readings, an attempt is made to provide a new interpretation of this theory by reconciling these two statements through finding a common point. In this reconciliation, the second reading is considered primary, and the first one is construed in its light. The result is that acquired knowledge is both subsequent to knowledge by presence (as presented in the first reading) and is in reality the same as knowledge by presence (as presented in the second reading). Although this reconciliation might initially seem contradictory, a closer examination reveals that the subsequence of acquired knowledge to knowledge by presence is of the nature of "subsequence of figurative to denotative."