پژوهشنامه فلسفه دین (نامه حکمت)
سال دهم شماره 2 (پیاپی 20، پاییز و زمستان 1391)

Negative theology epistemically asserts that God is Incomprehensible and linguisticly emphasizes that He is Ineffable. In epistemic aspect, negative theologians refer to such arguments as mankind’s inability to surround the almighty God, God’s transcendence and His beyondness to reason, limitedness of Effect’s knowledge of Cause and limitedness of human cognitive faculties. In linguistic aspect, they refer to Inconceivability of The Transcendent and His lack of any form. Critics offer such Critiques as Inadequacy of the negative knowledge, self-inconsistency of negative theology and that it leads us to a form of agnosticism. In fact, although most of advocates of negative theology insist on imperfectness of human knowledge, they do not believe in agnostisicm and they consider the knowledge of divine nature and divine attributes as comprising various degrees. In negative theology, speaking of Him is just for such reasons as an inner compulsion to speak of Him, or teaching others, and all positive utterances of him is indeed concern His manifestations. Hence, everyone speaks of Him to the extent that he has intuited His manifestations.

Sadra made sincere attempts to elaborate on the historically ever-challenging issue of bliss while keeping himself with the principles of his philosophy. The question is that how we could extract and redefine the pattern of human bliss from Sadra’s philosophy upon the trans-substantial motion – which is one of grounding principles of transcendent theosophy of Mulla Sadra – in such a way that immunes us from getting involved in paradoxical inconsistencies. As the entelechy of human perfection, bliss is essentially rational. Mulla Sadra believes that the truth of bliss reveals itself through wayfaring and evolution in the path of development of theoretical reason and holds that the hierarchicality of practical reason is effective in human evolution as it is much supportive for theoretical reason in many respects; insofar as he believes in a kind of correspondence between theoretical and practical reasons. This essay proposes a conceptual model of Sadra’s pattern forbliss within which the correspondence of theoretical and practical reasons has also been taken into account. The presence and influence of trans-substantial motion is far evident in Sadra’s discourse on the essence and quality of human bliss; as the analogically informed, perspective of transcendent theosophy is effective in the debate on the obstacles of bliss. It is noteworthy that the exposition of bliss according to the principle of trans-substantial motion has special implications that help us to fathom some significant points of Sadra’s anthropology.

In general, what is considered to be a part of the "philosophies of…" – which is to say the different branches of philosophy like philosophy of law, philosophy of religion, moral philosophy, etc. - pertains to the late modern period in western philosophy and has not been tackled as such in classical philosophies such as Islamic philosophy. Of course, on a formal basis, this statement is true since, for instance, in classical Islamic philosophy, we cannot find a branch of philosophy called "philosophy of religion", even though its main issues are tackled in philosophy in the broad sense. However, within the tradition of the Islamic philosophy, a quite complete and coherent set of issues concerning philosophy of religion has been expressed in Avicenna's philosophical system. His view on the subject is presented in the tenth article of Avicenna's Metaphysics of Al-Shifa, which includes more or less the most important issues which must be dealt with in the philosophy of religion on the basis of an a priori approach of its subject – I said a priori because in general, actual books concerning philosophy of religion do not present any precise definition or criteria to delimitate the subject of this branch of philosophy, and each writer tends to present a series of issues which are in some sense linked to religion and especially to God's existence according to his personal taste.However, in a rational philosophy linked to the classical tradition - such as Avicenna's philosophy, the subject of which is being qua being and issues of which are the essential predicates of this subject -, the first question is that each new philosophical issue must be an essential predicate of absolute being or being qua being. Therefore, we ought to find a logical status in the system of absolute being for the "philosophy of religion" and all "philosophies of ". The main characteristic of Avicenna's philosophy of religion is the rationality of religion as well as its perfect correspondence to the a priori principles of the speculative intellect. While presenting the issue of justice as the criterion for the need for religion, his philosophy also benefits from the spirit of the Gnostic theory of the Perfect Man which reflects the characteristics of a Shiite philosophy of religion.

The variants of semantic, realization-based, demonstrative, and motivational and … relations between religion and ethics has long been the focus of attention among thinkers, at least from Plato onwards. For both areas undertake the prosperity and happiness of the mundane human beings, and they establish different foundations, based on the extent to which they are needless to, or in need of, one another. According to one formulation and with arguments as God’s absolute sovereignty, God’s creativeness, subsistence of accident with accident and ascription of actions to opposite attribute the exemplification of moral values and norms are contingent upon a series of religious propositions. However, ontological dependence of morality to religion, even in its more modest versions, that for example God is the legislator of moral laws, cannot overcome the troubles and criticisms like the arbitrariness of ethical attributes.

Among considered solutions of the problem of evils, the theodicy of soul-making is the most important one. John Hick, the contemporary philosopher of religion, has offered this idea in his book Evil and The God of Love.Owing to the fact that Muhammad Baqir Majlisi’s approach in exploring the problem of “life after death” is religious, it is expectable that his principles in this respect be also consistent with his approach and be based upon religious scriptures that either he has addressed directly or it can be deduced from his descriptions of life after death. These principles include theological, cosmological, anthropological, and epistemological ones, which can be labeled in twelve principles.These principles are concerning revealed knowledge, the essence of knowledge, the authority of apparent meaning (dhahir), delusiveness of space and its dependency on the emplaced, reality of both spirit and body, creation ex nihilo and temporality of universe, consideration of philosophical rules to be founded on delusion, similarity of states of being, centrality of the prophet and Imams in resurrection events, spirits’ death, and acceptance of ambiguity instead of Interpreting Islamic verses concerning details of resurrection events. In majlisi’s view, fundamentality of God and congruence of this world and the other one can be deduced from the doctrine of resurrection.

Are religious doctrines about the creation of life and especially of human being compatible with scientific theories? This problem always has been disputable among theologians and scientists. Most scientists believe that evolutionism is the correct answer and, on the contrary, most theologians reject this theory. This article argues a third and different idea and tries to show that the Islamic doctrine, on one hand, believes in fixism of present human beings and at the same time, does not imply the falsity of evolutionism but is compatible with it.

In transcendent philosophy (al-hikmahal-mota’aliyah) we encounter with some transphysical notions such as God, His Names and Attributes like Knowledge, Power, Will and Intention, and some other notions such as Throne (‘rsh), Chair (kursii), Tablet (Lauh), Pen (Qalam), the immortality of soul, its life in Isthmus (barzakh) and in Day of Judgment. In this article, we examine the methods for obtaining these notions by means of intellect, gnosis and revelation. We also talk about the obstacles that prevent us from obtaining knowledge such as our intellectual limitation, our language deficiency to unfold truths, our being locked in time and space boundaries and heart’s rust. The result is that we can obtain knowledge of these notions equivalent to our existential capacity, by annihilating obstacles.