فصلنامه آینه معرفت
پیاپی 73 (زمستان 1401)

Al-Farabi and Avicenna are among the greatest and most well-known Muslim peripatetic philosophers in philosophical and intellectual discussions. The intellectual foundations of the Peripatetic philosophical system in the Islamic world are based on the rational principles and philosophical thoughts of these two great philosophers. The type of these philosophers' attitude toward practical wisdom has raised questions and doubts about this concern to that extent that some have wondered whether the search for practical wisdom was Avicenna's concern. Presenting and evaluating the views of al-Farabi and Avicenna about practical wisdom, the present paper attempts to show that Avicenna, in addition to sharing the same view of basic principles of practical wisdom with al-Farabi, also considers the doctrine of Saint Legislator as the source of the three branches of ethics, home economics and politics; and the difference between Avicenna's and al-Farabi's viewpoints about practical wisdom stems from the fact that the former considers moral propositions to be among the generally accepted and well-known opinions, while the latter considers moral propositions to be rational and proof-based one.

Categories are tools of our mind through which we know the facts around us. Man puts outer objects or the concepts that govern them under one of the categories to understand them. But the extent to which the categories truly reflect all external facts and all the facts of existence is not yet clear. From the point of view of some Islamic philosophers, it can be inferred that categories and types that are created below them play a decisive role in determining the type of creatures, that is, they are not merely tools for classifying beings in the human mind. Mulla Sadra depicts a different view of categories. He considers them to be limited to the mentally-posited quiddity. It is clear that when we consider existence to be original and not essence, all considerations and laws governing essence will also become unrealistic and subjective. In Mulla Sadra's philosophy, we do not have to conform to the categories and we are not bound to categorization. We can claim that, in Mulla Sadra's philosophy, the importance and centrality of categories in determining the type of beings is lost, and a being can change its nature from one type to another and from one category to another without the impossibility of being necessary. In this article, we will first briefly provide examples to show exceptions to the inclusion and comprehensiveness of categories from the perspective of various philosophers. Examples of facts not covered by categories and disputes over the total number of categories are cases in point. We try to illustrate the aforementioned point with examples from Mulla Sadra's works. We then examine the categories and their place in the fundamental reality of existence. It is obvious that the examination of such issues requires analysis, and inference from the opinions of philosophers. Our goal in this article is not necessarily to seek textual evidence, but to use the text to explain the underlying purpose.

Adopting a rigid perspective toward post Cartesian modernity, traditionalists have referred to a type of knowledge which has a supernatural quality and is related to degrees of existence. Rejecting the efficacy of experience and argument which are considered pivotal to post-renaissance epistemology, they assume that intuitive knowledge is the main source of intellect and getting access to truth. Intuitionism in traditionalism moves beyond methodology. It seems that we are facing a sort of paradigm shift which tries to change the established assumptions. The present article deals with the issue of whether the sacred knowledge could basically be called knowledge or not. To answer this question, we examine the two necessary elements of knowledge, truth and justification. Theconclusion is that most of traditionalists’ claims are irrational and have no justification. The realization of this knowledge in the contemporary modern world appears unrealistic.

The problem of predestination and free will is one of the long-lasting and important topics which has preoccupied people's minds, and made scholars of different religions and doctorines to adopt a position toward it. The focus of the present paper is on Ameri’s perspective on this important issue. It is hypothesized that Ameri supports neither predestination nor absolute free will. He rather takes a mddile position. The main findings of this research are: to provide an answer to this research problem, Ameri first identify the point of conflict through distinguishing between the two aspects of an object, its intrinsic aspect and its non-intrinsic aspect, and between the types of actions- natural, forced, and intellectual. He believes that the two types of natural and forced actions are related to determinism, and the intellectual and desired actions are related to free wll. He further believes that it is the active power from which actions are issued, and the passive power is the power in which action are established. They are related to predestination and free will, and in the discussion of the three elements, only necessary by other than itself and possibility are related to the discussion of predestination and free will. He defends the theory of the creation of actions and provides reasons to refute predestination and delegation, and after refuting these two theories, he adopts the theory which takes the middle ground between these two theories. To prove the validity of this theory, he benefits from divine wisdom. In our evaluation of Ameri's theory we have made some reflections on predestination and free will.

The connection between ethics and metaphysics has always been an important problem in Neoplatonism. This question is also raised in the philosophy of Ibn Gabirol (the Jewish Neo-Platonist philosopher). Ibn Gabirol tries to connect ethics and metaphysics by the concept of ‘desire’. For him, the world consists of two movements: procession and reversion, i.e. the transformation of unity into multiplicity and the return of multiplicity into unity. Desire is both the cause of procession and the cause of reversion. “Human being” is the level from which the reversion begins. For this reason, he must turn “descending desire” (procession) into “ascending desire” (reversion). It is ethics that helps an individual, in his movement towards happiness, to make the ascending desire dominate the descending desire, that is, the ‘the pure indeterminate’ or ‘First unity’. But how can ethics do it? Ethics leads man towards his ascending desire through adjusting the natural dispositions. Man, because of his animal soul and his descending desire, confuses the determined things for the pure indeterminate as the object of his happiness. This causes the soul to go out of balance and tends to move toward multiple natural dispositions. These natural dispositions themselves cause a person to move further away from happiness. Ethics puts a person on the path of happiness through balancing natural dispositions.

Philosophical hermeneutics is one of the theories of interpretation of texts in the West after the Renaissance, which created changes in the epistemological thinking of some modern Muslim thinkers. In addition to its difference in foundations, this theory creates relativism and interpretive pluralism. Neglecting these consequences and accepting this theory, some scholars in the field of interpretation of the Holy Qur'an try to apply interpretative pluralism to the issue of the inexhaustibility of understanding the Holy Qur'an. It is thus necessary to analyze and compare these two theories. The present research aims to investigate interpretative pluralism and find its difference between philosophical hermeneutics and the inexhaustibility of the interpretation of the Holy Quran with an analytical method. The conclusion is that, due to the creation of relativism, following doubt, departing from the literal meanings of the word, and also focusing on the interpreter, interpretative pluralism is fundamentally different from the issue of inexhaustibility in the interpretation of the Holy Qur'an. The two are not compatible with each other, although they have some similarities.

Some verses in the Holy Quran, either directly or indirectly, attribute errors or sins to Allah’s prophets. Based on their intellectual background, interpreters may come up with different explanations and interpretations of such verses in their efforts to make them consistent with the idea of Ismah (i.e., infallibility). The present study aimed to take a look at the interpretation of mystics and scholastic theologians by examining verses 76 to 78 in Al-An'am chapter. The study hypothesized that the definition of the concepts of prophetic mission and infallibility would differ among scholastic theologians and mystics who are equipped with intuitive tools. The results show that mystics, based on their specific ontology and epistemology, use the grand meaning and knowledge of the words to indicate that the apparent meaning of the verses should not contradict infallibility. From the mystics’ point of view, these verses are a metaphor for the prophets’ spiritual wayfaring. The stars, the moon, and the sun as mediators were removed gradually from Abraham’s (peace be upon him) path leading the removal of his self in front of the supreme Deity. On the other hand, theologians are of the opinion that the appearance of the Qur'an is proof, and one can reveal the purpose by sticking to the meaning of the Qur'an by referring the metaphorical verses to the unambiguous ones. Adopting interpretation is permitted in cases where there is valid evidence. According to theologians, the ambiguities in the story of the prophets are interpreted as abandoning the primary or as instructing others.