فصلنامه پژوهش های فلسفی - کلامی
سال پانزدهم شماره 2 (پیاپی 58، زمستان 1392)

Scholars have analyzed and judged about prophetic revelation with different approaches. There are, at least, three discourses about revelation and prophethood, especially Holy Prophet’s prophethood (May the blessing and peace of Allah be upon him and his progeny) and Quranic revelation: 1) Islamic discourse which regards revelation as a completely divine phenomenon with no role for man or human elements; 2) Christian discourse which regards revelation a divine-human phenomenon; and 3) secular discourse which regards revelation a completely human phenomenon and evaluates it only through social and psychological paradigms. William Montgomery Watt is a Christian theologian, who have written works and conducted research on Islam and Holy Prophet’s way of life for more than 60 years. Being familiar with these three discourses, he provides a new system to analyze revelation and prophethood as well as Holy prophet’s prophethood and the form and content of Quranic revelation. Contrary to his predecessors, Watt does not reject Holy prophet’s prophethood; rather, he believes that Quran includes divine revelation. The present paper, first, designs a system of Watt’s statements about revelation, then analyzes and criticizes them. On the whole, the discourse in which Watt analyzes the principles of revelation and prophethood and, accordingly, Holy Prophet’s prophethood, is regarded the resultant of three Christian, Islamic and secular discourses.

The discussion about existence and essence and their relationship is one of the fundamental discussions in philosophy. This relationship can be shown from different aspects in the form of natural, logical and philosophical distinction. No philosopher has discussed about natural distinction and the distinction observed in philosophical atmosphere of Greece and Aristotle’ works on discussions related to “scientific questions” and “first philosophy” is a logical distinction. Aristotle never goes beyond logical distinction and is unable to do so because he believes that world has no beginning and creator, existence is always there, absolute non-existence is absolutely non-existent, and theconcept of possibility- as a real gap between essence and existence- isunknown. On the contrary, divine religions regard universe and whatever in itas created which means that it does not have the cause of its “being” with itself and receives its existence from creator (God). In Islamic world, such a doctrine led to the emergence of the philosophical concept of “possibility” and bipolar classification of creatures into “necessary being” and “contingent being”. Philosophical distinction means that “existence” in contingent beings is the effect of an external cause and out of the essence of thing. Historically, this theory traces back to Kindi’s philosophy in which he replaces the doctrine of creation with the Hellenic theory of “visibility of universe” by providing thetheory of “creation from nothing” and describing the cause of all causes as being creator. Farabi is the first philosopher who discussed philosophical distinction by dividing creatures into necessary and contingent and analyzing contingents into existence and essence. Avicenna chose the philosophical distinction as the basis of his metaphysics and extracted its philosophical requirements in different domains. The present paper is conducted with the aim of showing Kindi and Farabi’s contribution to the formation of this theory, with regard to their existing works.

Religious experience is one of the issues developed in the fields of new theology and philosophy of religion and in the context of new religious studies. Religious experience has a special role in pious life and consists of a vast scope including prayer, supplication, answering supplication, spiritualintuitions, etc. Mystical experience, which is closely related to religious experience, gives meaning to mystics’ life. In this kind of experience, the mystic unites with ultimate reality and attains an indescribable state. This unity is most important distinction between religious experience and mystical experience. Religious experience is different from mystical experience and every religious experience is not necessarily a mystical experience. However, since both are a kind of experience, the present paper compares them. Revelation is also an experience exclusive to prophet, with features not found in the two other experiences.

According to the theory of normativity of belief, understanding the idea that there is a normative relationship between the mental act of believing and the content of belief reinforces the concept of propositional attitude of belief. The issue of how to formulate the aforementioned normative relationship- which can also be called the issue of norm-based formulation, for short-is the onewhich is abundantly studied in relevant philosophical literature. In the philosophical literature of two or three recent years, two kinds of norm-based formulation are proposed. First, correctness of a proposition is the necessary condition for the permissiveness of the belief in that proposition; second,correctness of a proposition is the necessary and sufficient condition for the permissiveness of the belief in that proposition. Providing a brief account ofthe theory of normativity of belief and reviewing older norm-based formulations, the present paper argues for the first view and against the second one.

Theoretical entities mean those unobservable entities which are taken for granted to explain observable indescribable phenomena in a theory. One of the most important issues which are always controversial in studying these entities and emphasized in the present paper is their ontological aspect. Can we believe in all these entities and accept their existential reality unconditionally? Should we reject all theoretical entities as myths constructed by scientists’ minds and try to establish a new science with no theoretical entity? Given the very important role we assign to this kind of entities in scientific explanation of events, their unobservablity has led to a very high sensitivity and formation of various and sometimes contradictory views about these entities. Two opposing views are realism and antirealism with different spectral classifications in terms of the rate of their commitment to constructive elements of each view. If none of these two views- realism and antirealism- can answer the question of ontological state of theoretical entities completely in their most radical manifestation, then we need to search for some criteria to help us indifferentiating real entities from myths which are merely constructed by mind. The present paper seeks to study the concept and status of theoretical entities in science and tries to achieve a proper criterion to judge about their objective reality in the framework of Ian Hacking’s experimental realism. It tries to review fundamental beliefs of important views about theoretical entities and emphasize on Hacking’s position by clarifying their status in science.

Avicenna is an influential and great Muslim philosopher in Islam and West, whose theory on the connection of intellect to active intellect is one of the important components of his thought and has exerted influence on subsequent philosophers. This theory is one of the two important views discussed in epistemology and included in the framework of divine ontology and worldview. It is also an instance of one of the two macro-approaches to the relationship of world and man with principles (affirmative or negative relationship) and is included in affirmative group which does not neglect man. Asking what are the connection and condition of intellect and active intellect, the present paper reanalyzes this theory. The review of Avicenna’s philosophical thought shows that connection is soul’s attentiveness, directing toward, complete readiness and access to active intellect as well as soul’s traversing through the path of knowledge from sense to intellect and its connection with intellect in its particular sense. Then “illumination and emanation of intellectual- actual form” is actualized by active intellect and “perception and impression” are actualized by intellect “intellectually or as intellectual knowledge”. In this connection, intellect does not unite with active intellect.

The issue of divine names and attributes is one of the very widespread theological discussions and the term “name” and its derivations are among the most applied terms in Islamic sciences (including transmitted and intellectualsciences). The discussion of the concept of “God’s Name” has a determinantrole in the propositions related to the issues of divine names. Having reviewed the meaning of God’s name in different Islamic sciences including theology, philosophy and mysticism, the present paper investigates the difference between these meanings. It not only provides different results about the relationship between God’s names in different Islamic sciences, but also concludes that God’s name in theological term is different from its equivalence in transcendent philosophy and Islamic mysticism. In theology, God’s name means the term taken from attribute and act, but in transcendent philosophy and Islamic mysticism name is used as an objective fact vis-à-vis divine essence, attribute and act.

For Mulla Sadra and Jaspers, man’s reality (essence) is flowing and always in motion and becoming. The question is why and on what basis they refuse to accept a stable and unchanging character for man. No doubt, this common view has particular principles and different reasons, that is, Mulla Sadra formulates this principle based on substantial motion and Jaspers on future possibility and man’s freedom. Furthermore, both Mulla Sadra and Jaspers regard soul as man’s reality. However, the soul which Mulla Sadra regards asidentical to illuminative attribution to God, as having existence genus, and asidentical to individuality is fundamentally different from Jaspers’s existence which lacks above-mentioned characteristics. Jaspers’s existence actualizes in connection and is known by something else. So, it can be said that soul’s substantial motion means achieving a stage of existence, i.e. objective spiritual reality and associations, given the fundamentality of existence as one of theunarguable preliminaries of substantial motion and the fact that motion and becoming are not contrary to being and existence; rather they are a kind of existence and being. This is the point where we can understand the importance of substantial motion and its indispensible role in man’s perfection and transcendence more completely through comparing and co-evaluating two traditions of Islamic philosophy in the field of transcendent philosophy and West’s philosophy in the field of existentialism.