Spiritual Health in Rene Descarte's and Allameh Tabatabaei's Views

A comparative discussion on "Spiritual Health", as one of the most imperative health fundamentals has been initiated. This concept has recently been added to the previous health constituents including physical, sychological and social aspects by the World Health Organization. This paper considers views adopted by two philosophers and thinkers, Rene Descartes, known as the father of modern philosophy, culture and humanism and Allameh Tabatabaei, regarded as the representative of Islamic culture and philosophy in recent time. Due to his humanistic perspective, Descartes holds that spiritual health is of an abstract nature and is solely connected with human's conscience and intellectual insight and is also indicative of a naturalistic (materialistic) interpretation of humans, but it is not concerned with human's desires, behavior and superhumanistic realm. But, in Allameh Tabatabaei's opinion, who is a divine philosopher, spiritual health depends on human's super-naturalistic realm and meaning seeking nature, i.e. the acceptance of absolute reality principle (God) as the meaning of life that aside from correcting human's insight and outlook, assigns direction to his behavior and attitude.