فصلنامه تاریخ فلسفه
سال دهم شماره 2 (پیاپی 38، پاییز 1398)

In this paper, the authors examine and discuss the different equivalents of the Aristotelean term of hyle in Latin, Arabic, and Persianin terms of their etymological and conceptual features. Moreover, they try to reveal the relationship between this concept and the concept of mother and female gender in Old Persian. It seems that the early translators of Greek philosophy, because of the conceptual relationships between hyle and mother in the writings of Plato and Aristotle, chose some equivalents for hyle which derived from the meanings of mother and female gender. This is particularly important because the concept of philosophical matter which is rooted in Aristotle’s philosophy and is commonly used today, especially in empirical sciences, is rooted in the concepts of mother and female gender in terms of its historical and philosophical background. This has prompted the early translators of Greek philosophy who were looking for near equivalents for the Greek hyle to consider this relationship and create terms which could transfer the meaning of this word correctly. However, this does not mean that in Aristotle’s philosophy, similar to some mythological beliefs, hyle indicates that the world is the offspring of the intimacy of male and female elements. Rather, it means that among ancient Greeks, including Aristotle and Plato, the female gender has been introduced as the receptacle of form in the birth of human beings and animals.

The Good is the first of the three hypostases in Plotinian philosophy and is considered to be the Good in two ways: in the arc of descent as the efficient cause and in the arc of ascent as the final cause of all beings. The Intellect is the first manifestation of the Good and is, at the same time, the same as both intellection and existence. It enjoys both an ontological and an epistemological aspect. The Intellect supervises the world of being and all its levels; in other words, the world is administered according to the decrees, measures, plans, and programs that the Intellect has devised and determined for it. Man’s fate is no exception to this rule; however, since, based on the Intellect’s pre-destined rules, they enjoy free will, they are not simply passive beings in the order of creation. Rather, relying on their free will and while uniting with the Good, they can achieve eternal happiness. Therefore, in Plotinus’ view, the whole world of being is blessed with the Good as the agent and end of creation. This paper examines the relationship between the Good and destiny and concludes that the Good administers the intelligible and sensible worlds through the Intellect.

Suhrawardī’s light-oriented philosophy interprets spiritual wayfaring as the intuition of Nūr al-anwār (Light of all lights) within the framework of different levels and luminous realms. Nūr al-anwār illuminates the world and rules a kingdom. It is referred to as khvarenah (divine mystical force) in Avesta and as Farr (glory and splendor) in Persian. Farr is a divine gift that makes the individual who is blessed with it worthy of caliphate and kingship. Suhrawardī stipulates that the perfect man, who has been called with names such as Espahbodi Noor, Minavi (spiritual) Lights, Chief of Elements, Avarman Aspahr Angel, and Ravanbakhsh (Soul Giver), enjoys the station of royal glory, kingship, and charisma. He also believes that the highest position belongs to those kings whose existential realm is the locus of a collection of divine lights, glory, and beauty. In fact, they are the manifestation of divine perfection on Earth. In contrast, Mullā Ṣadrā follows an ontological approach to the features of perfect man. He believes that the perfect man is the all-showing mirror of the Truth and divine names and attributes and maintains that it is their nominal comprehensiveness which makes them worthy of divine vicegerency. Given the different basic principles of light and existence in these two philosophical schools, the present paper mainly aims to provide an answer to the questions of who a perfect man is and what their referents are. Mullā Ṣadrā considers existence to be principial and examines the whole being and place following an ontological approach and, thus, sees a perfect man as an individual who has reached the supreme level of existence and perfect intellectual immateriality. However, Suhrawardī holds that a typical perfect man could be any individual who has reached the level of royal glory and intuition.

Fancisco Suárez (1548-1617) was the last great scholastic philosopher of the Western Renaissance. He opened up new horizons for his contemporary Scholars regarding certain philosophical and metaphysical discussions. Although he was an advocate of Aristotelian- Thomistic tradition, he believed that metaphysics was in demand of certain fundamental modifications. Aristotle, on the one hand, emphasized the unity of the subject of science and, on the other hand, spoke as if he believed in the existence of multiple subjects for metaphysics. Post-Aristotle philosophers, from Greek and Alexandrian philosophers to Islamic and Christian ones, particularly and most importantly Ibn Sīnā, made great efforts to remove the existing inconsistencies. In his Disputationes Metaphysicae (Metaphysical Disputations), through examining the various ideas that had been propounded in this regard until his time, Suárez presented a new approach and introduced “being qua being” as the subject of metaphysics. In order to further explain his view, he elaborated on certain expressions such as “real being” as opposed to actual being and “mental being” as opposed to formal being. Moreover, he maintained that real being is a “general mental concept of being in its nominal sense”. In this paper, through a meticulous study of the meaning of “real being” in Suárez’s view, the authors intend to investigate and evaluate his place in the tradition and history of philosophy regarding the subject of metaphysics.

Priority or posteriority through substantiality or quiddity is considered to be consistent with the theory of the principiality of quiddity, and its application in the system of the principiality of existence has been merely limited to the priority of genus and differentia to species. Through explaining the meaning of substantiality and its difference from substance, this paper examines the former term in Islamic philosophy and clarifies its process of development and applications. This term was propounded for the first time in Suhrawardī’s works and, later, Mīr Dāmād distinguished the referents of this kind of priority from those of priority by essence and introduced it as one of the three types of essential priority. Priority through substantiality has several applications in the system of the principiality of quiddity, such as the priority of the causes of the rational consistency (genus and differentia) or external consistency (matter and form) of quiddity to quiddity, the priority of quiddity to its quiddative and ontological concomitants, and the priority of quiddity to existence. After Mullā Ṣadrā, because of the dominance of his theory of the principiality of existence, the referents of priority and posteriority by substantiality decreased and were limited to those which were in conformity with the system of the principiality of existence. In contrast, the other referents of this kind of priority have been considered to be among those of priority and posteriority by truth.

“Weakness of will” is one of the fundamental concepts in Aristotle’s ethics, a thorough understanding of which requires an understanding of its meaning and use in his views. In this paper, following a descriptive-analytic method, the authors initially refer to the lexical roots of the expression of “weakness of will” in Greek and, then, try to explain Socrates’ idea of weakness of will and Aristotle’s critique of this view. Next, given some of the referents of the concept of weakness of will in Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, they seek to demonstrate why human beings sometimes act against their ethical knowledge. Later they provide Aristotle’s analysis of the phenomenon of weakness of will as one of the obstacles to living an ethical life and argue that sometimes it stands in contrast to rationality. As a result, while being aware that something is ethically wrong or right, an individual, under the influence of their misplaced desires, might act unethically or cease to act ethically.In Aristotle’s view, a necessary condition for the rationality of ethical necessity is for human beings to benefit from “practical wisdom”. He also believes that if the intellect leads the other human faculties at the level of act, individuals will certainly choose and do the right thing.

This study is intended to provide an answer to the following questions: Does induction generate certain knowledge or tentative conclusions? Is perfect induction possible or impossible? If it is impossible, could the addition of a supplement to imperfect induction result in certain and absolute judgments? In order to provide some answers to the raised questions, the writer has explored the historical development of the theory of induction and then discussed the theory adopted in this paper. This theory has not undergone many fluctuations in the history of Muslim thinkers’ logical thoughts and can be studied in three historical phases or periods. In the first phase, the greatest player of which was Fārābī and, more than him, Ibn Sīnā, induction was divided into perfect and imperfect types. At the same time, Fārābī explicitly stated that perfect induction is impossible and emphasized that imperfect induction results in uncertain conclusions. In order to compensate for the defects of induction, Ibn Sīnā demonstrated how the conclusions of an imperfect induction can be promoted to the level of an empirical judgment through using a compound syllogism and benefitting from the chance principle so that it would turn into an ensuring and certain conclusion. The main player of the second period is Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī. He maintained that imperfect induction does not yield certain results, and what has been interpreted as empirical judgment and placed within the category of certainties and even axioms is not anything more than an analogy. The third phase is characterized by the efforts and ideas of Muhammad Baqir Sadr, who believed that, although imperfect induction results in certain conclusions, the mentioned certainty, in contrast to Ibn Sīnā’s view, does not result from the mediation of a compound syllogism and the chance principle. He, rather, acknowledged that the certainty of inductive judgments arises from a specific feature of human intellect which persuades it to ignore fewer possible instances in the face of numerous possible ones. He calls this kind of certainty subjective certainty. The present paper, after reporting and analyzing the three- fold periods, demonstrates that the only defensible and justifiable standpoint regarding the theory of induction belongs to Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī and concludes that induction, whether by itself or with the help of a syllogism, yields nothing more than a tentative conclusion.