فصلنامه حکمت اسلامی
پیاپی 29 (تابستان 1400)

The two terms “ilahiyyat in its broad sense” and “ilahiyyat  in its narrow sense” concerns two sections of first philosophy both dealing with God and His attributes. The question is what relation is there between these two sections. Is the latter a part of the former being separated from it for the precedence of its subject matter? Or, does it constitute a separate discipline in parallel lines with the former? Namely, is it possible to consider the latter as an independent discipline of knowledge, so that both constitute two separate sections of the first philosophy?Some philosophers preferred the former view but others the latter. Those with the latter view hold that the subject matters of the questions of “ilahiyyat  in its narrow sense” are the same as some of those of “ilahiyyat  in its broad sense’. However, their methods are different. Furthermore, according to the logical criteria in the division of different sciences, philosophers hold that “ilahiyyat  in its narrow sense” does not fall under “ilahiyyat  in its broad sense”. Mulla Sadra has demonstrated that the two ilahiyyat  stand in parallel lines and each with different method constitutes a section of the first philosophy but both deal with being qua being.

As a favorite political unit in the classic Islamic political philosophy, utopia has come under the criticism that it is an authoritarian regime. Classic Muslim philosophers, however, classified the totalitarian city-estate as none-utopian state and distinct from utopia. As authoritarianism is different from the classic despotism, it seems necessary to study the relation of utopia to authoritarianism.Some scholars have regarded the organization of utopia as an authoritarian regime and others have embraced some authoritarian indexes in utopia, they have not explicitly mentioned them, though.In his essay, the author has singled out the indexes of authoritarianism in utopia from the domestic and Western texts and then assessed them according to methods of interpretation. First chief, vote-sharing, nawabit[1] (weeds), guardianship, sermon, collectivism are the most important indexes of authoritarianism in utopia examined in this  paper. The presented documents prove that none of the indexes demonstrate that utopia is authoritarian[1]. In al-Farabi’s theory of utopia, nawabit constitutes groups of people who lack values and are useless or even harmful. They are similar to weeds. Al-Farabi has classified them into 9 groups.

Although the explanation of causality is one of the main aims of natural sciences, it fell under suspicions and ambiguities in humanities. Such ambiguities, not only led to the creation of contradictory schools about the nature of human phenomena, but also influenced the descriptive methods of humanities, and brought about major controversies about the aims of humanities. It seriously made the nature and quality of prescriptive sciences suffer from ambiguity, too. It is, thus, necessary to consider the principle of causality and its tie with humanities as one of the most rooted controversies  in the philosophy of humanities.  In his article, the author has first studied some interpretations of causality in the course of human phenomena critically and then answered fallacies and doubts surrounded some scholars. He then goes to elucidate the principle of causality in the course of human phenomena through rational analysis and explain kinds of causality and their ties.

According to narrated arguments, all beings enjoy some level of consciousness and awareness by which they can glorify Allah and obey His commands willingly. The Qur’anic verses and traditions on this issue are plenty enough to claim that awareness for all beings is taken for granted in Islam. Mystics have suggested their visions in order to  support this religious idea and some philosophers particularly Mulla Sadra have put forward various arguments proving this intuitive and reported doctrine rationally. Nonetheless, some scholars hold that all efforts on this regard are useless trying to raise many objections against those rational arguments.In what presented here, the author has reported Mulla Sadra’s two arguments for the theory and studied those objections. The first argument comes from the graded theory of existence facing four objections and the second comes from the demands of consciousness of natural agents facing three objections. The author has shown that the two arguments are efficacious and all objections can be answered and dropped.

“Philosophy for children” is a new subject in modern syllabus of education in the course of improvement of practicing philosophy and reason for children. Despite its good capacity to make a room for thinking and creativity, this plan has principles irreconcilable with those of Iranian local philosophy. It is thus necessary to scrutinize its philosophical principles. Due to the importance of ethics and moral training as one aim of such a plan learnt by the kids by means of story, this article studies the principles of ethical relativism of Liza’s story and its guide (the content of Lipman’s plan for moral training) and compares it to Transcendent Theosophy. A descriptive-analytic study of the content proves that, despite Lipman’s rejection of relativism, his denial of the absolute good and his voice that values and thinking are personal and prepared by a ground are documents denoting that the content is morally relativistic. Since it fails to free from the strains of conventionalism and its lack of fixed criteria, this content suffers from relativism and its consequences. In contrast, Transcendent Theosophy is safe from the harm of relativism because it considers the ethical propositions absolute and adapts an ontological and virtue-ethic attitude. It has thus more appropriate axiological principles in the creation of a coherent plan for moral training.

Although Muslim philosophers have embraced the spiritual-resurrection, they have disagreed on the bodily-resurrection and on how it should be. As one celebrated twelfth century scholar, Mulla Na’ima Taleqani believed in bodily-elemental resurrection and thus suggested five arguments for it: that hereafter reward or punishment might be unjust, metempsychosis, that vegetative and animal faculties are parts of man’s personal identity, the identity of bodily faculties in the hereafter with those of this life, and that body helps distinguish individual man. In what follows, the author has first dealt with Mulla Na’ima Taleqani’s particular account of bodily-elemental resurrection and then examined his five arguments. The result is that those five arguments fail to demonstrate his claim. Some of those arguments rest on ill-founded principles and some suffer from erroneous explanation

The concepts of right and law are the mostly used terms in different fields such as fiqh, law, ethics, and politics. As one prominent Enlightenment philosopher, Kant proposed many deep discussions as to the explanation of concepts of right and law and their decisive role in different disciplines of knowledge. Viewing Kant’s crucial influence on the subsequent philosophers, the criticism of his ideas and the explanation of right and law in the Islamic school of thought pave the way for philosophical inquiry about the two terms on the Islamic ground.In what follows, the author has tried to brief on some of Kant’s principles explaining his conception of right and law and then to examine them in the light of Islamic lofty thoughts. Contrary to Kant’s humanistic and subjectivistic approach and his reliance on the self-autonomous reason in his study of the concepts of right and law -which constitute his main scheme in this study, i.e. that he regards man’s interests and will as the axis of formulating axioms of ethics-, the Islamic approach does not fail to take into consideration the monotheistic world-view and God-centered attitude in the course of the analysis of the two terms. Thus we may propose the issues of right and law in the two descriptive and normative fields in the light of the Islamic theosophical teachings and to look into their ties closely.

Avicenna has advanced three apparently different theories about divine attributes of perfection: identity-in-reality and conceptual unity, being implied by the Essence, and reference to relation and negation. The study of his words proves that -despite the apparent meaning of some of his words- what he means by being implied by the Essence is not that those attributes are issued by the Essence so that it contradicts the identity-in-reality theory of attributes one with others or with the Essence; rather, he means that they are implied analytically and by abstraction. Therefore, this theory is reconcilable with other two theories. It will also be clear that although the theory of relation and negation is reconcilable with being implied by the Essence theory, it goes irreconcilable with the conceptual unity theory as per one interpretation or with the theory of identity-in-reality and conceptual unity as per another interpretation.

Having considered Mulla Sadra’s innovative opinion about the existential attitude toward knowledge and his belief in the intrinsic perfection of soul, the authors have gone to mainly explain, in their essay, the role of knowledge in the perfection of soul and its existential transcendence. In Mulla Sadra’s point of view, knowledge is an existential matter and because existence is concomitant with perfection, having knowledge is regarded as perfection for the soul. Accordingly, apart from the field of knowledge and the level of what is known, every kind of knowledge is perfection for the soul when acquiring that knowledge. Nonetheless, it is to be noted that any kind of knowledge determines the kind of perfection; and because knowledge is graded, the stronger the grade of existence is, the loftier the soul will be. It is noteworthy that Mulla Sadra’s precise account of how forms of knowledge occurs for the soul is that in its existential recreation the soul develops those forms through the emanation to its very existence, rather than the concrete addition to it. Thus as a result of this emanation, the soul is promoted in its existence and by the traversing over the grades of existence comes to know the realities of those forms.