فصلنامه نقد و نظر
سال بیست و پنجم شماره 1 (پیاپی 97، بهار 1399)

Philosophically speaking, emotional knowledge—hence mystical knowledge based on love of God—was not properly considered in Western philosophical tradition. According to the predominant view in this tradition, there is not much relation between emotions and feelings, on the one hand, and great acquisitions of “pure” knowledge, on the other. On this approach, knowledge is conceived as “adequacy or maximal match” between “mental representations” and certain “essences” in the external world. This is to say that, fcontrary to “language” and “sensory data,” emotions never represent anything—indeed, they amount to more than “mental responses” to objects. This has resulted in ignorance, within this tradition, of the role of human emotional dimensions in acquisition of knowledge. Thus, Western intellectuals were motivated to revise the concept of knowledge and ways of its acquisition. In the meantime, Husserl identified the notion of “intentionality” as the most important feature of consciousness, which opened a new window to the notion of knowledge. Moreover, in his peculiar phenomenology, Heidegger showed that there is a notion of “knowledge” which is more authentic than “efficient representation.” For Heidegger, knowledge is “openness.” Hence, emotions “open” to us how things are. This paper aims to analyze the function of love as the strongest and the most exciting emotion. To do so, we deploy the phenomenological method in light of the phenomenology of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, we seek to learn more about emotional and romantic knowledge in Rūmī’s Mathnavī. Results of a phenomenological analysis of Mathnavī’s poems confirm the possibility of gaining mystical knowledge of “love” through mystical reduction and intentionality. They show that not only is mystical knowledge possible, but is a way of knowledge largely ignored in the Western philosophical tradition.

This paper seeks to account for, and analyze, the wisdom behind primary jihad (al-jihād al-ibtidā’ī). The essential question is: what is the philosophy behind primary jihad in Islamic thought? In response to the problem, intellectuals have proposed three theories. Some people account for primary jihad in terms of human natural rights; others account for it in terms of the divine right; and still others consider it as an implication of the transcendence of Islam over other religions. These three accounts of the philosophy of primary jihad are centered on “beliefs and doctrines,” maintaining that primary jihad aims to obliterate polytheism and spread monotheism. In this paper, I deploy an analytic-documentary method to show that, besides these accounts, one might propose a fourth account, which I shall defend here. Unlike the three accounts in which combat with polytheism and non-divine beliefs are proposed as the philosophy behind primary jihad, this account concentrates on “conducts and actions,” taking the philosophy of primary jihad to be combat with immoralities and breaches of covenants.

In their theological work, some contemporary Imami intellectuals have divided stages of monotheism (tawḥīd) into “theoretical” and “practical.” They have proposed definitions and criteria in order to explain the bifurcation. A consideration of this body of work reveals that there are troubles with these definitions and criteria of the division. A more precise inquiry is needed to resolve these troubles. Moreover, that the bifurcation was not deployed in some other works necessitates a reconsideration of its advantages. As a conclusion of this library-analytic research, it turns out that (a) theoretical monotheism is in the realm of insights, whereas practical monotheism is to be found in the realms of desire, character, and deeds, (b) in Imami theology or kalām, the division was innovated by Mutahhari—it cannot be found prior to him, (c) although there might be justifications for why the majority of Imami theologians have refrained from making a division between theoretical and practical kinds of monotheism, the bifurcation has its advantages.

In the history of philosophy, very few arguments have grabbed the attention of intellectuals as strongly as ontological arguments have. Graham Oppy, the contemporary Australian philosopher of religion, is an atheist who has considered different versions of ontological arguments in order to uncover their weakness. In this paper, we deal with how Oppy has formulated ontological arguments and what his objections to them are. The paper deploys an analytic method in order to elaborate Oppy’s classification and objections. It turns out that there are several versions of what might be called the “ontological” argument. For Oppy, these arguments are characterized by a priority. The most general objections leveled by Oppy at his 8 versions of the argument consist in: question begging, lack of epistemic value, denial of possible contradictions in case God does not externally exist, and inconceivability of an entity with infinite attributes. We conclude that given challenges of ontological arguments for the existence of God, they fail to serve as arguments for God, although Oppy’s atheism and his conception of God and His attributes are not acceptable.

This paper considers and examines Griffin’s view of God’s power. I deploy a descriptive-analytic method to consider his view in terms of his process theology: God’s power is limited, inciting, and motivating, encouraging creatures to move toward initial and ideal goals. To substantiate his claim, Griffin makes recourse to metaphysical necessity and the meaning of real entities. He concludes that all beings enjoy intrinsic power and God cannot have unilateral control over them. Instead, He can influence them with His power to incite. There are foundational and marginal objections to Griffin’s view—critics have challenged his framework and presumptions. First: his view is vague; second: he has an exclusivist view of having power; third: he takes the control of creatures to be merely physical; fourth: in addition to internal inconsistency in the view, he treats God’s power to be equivalent to creatures.

There is an argument for God’s existence from consciousness. The argument was initially formulated by Swinburne in contemporary Western philosophy. He claims that no one has preceded him in formulating the argument, except John Locke who had a vague reference to it. The argument considers the existence of mental phenomena, such as feelings, emotions, intentions, and thoughts—which are scientifically unexplainable and merely admit of subjective explanations—as evidence for God’s existence. Swinburne provides an inductive versions of the argument, which confirms and reinforces the probability of God’s existence. A survey of arguments for God’s existence in Islamic philosophical tradition reveals that Mullā Ṣadra was the first philosopher who argued for God’s existence from rational consciousness. His argument is syllogistic and certainty-conferring. This paper deploys a descriptive-analytic method to consider the two versions of the argument from consciousness for God’s existence in Western and Islamic philosophical traditions, comparing their agreements, distinctions, weaknesses, and strengths.

There is adequate transmitted evidence for the legitimizing role of election. Opponents of the view suggest that the relevant evidence should not be taken at face value, but such argument is circular. Moreover, their objections to the validity of chains of transmitters of such evidence are unfounded. Their insistence on irrelevance of public allegiance (bay‘a) to actualization of the rule (wilāya) is based on taking wilāya to amount to the obligation of obedience—taking the unqualified evidence for obligation of obedience to ground an unconditional rule. The reason why they make a distinction between Infallible (ma‘ṣūm) and non-Infallible rulers vis-à-vis political legitimacy—that is, the enforcement of manipulations and forbiddance of subversion—is that they have confused divine appointment to wilāya with an independent legislation of a declaratory (waḍ‘ī) law. This will no longer seem odd if we take the appointment to wilāya as a defining (taklīfī) law assigning the supervision of people to the ruler; thus, the obligation of his obedience. For we can draw a distinction between essential forbiddance and accidental forbiddance of electing a fallible ruler. In this paper, I deploy the logical analytic method to formulate arguments against the legitimizing role of election.