فصلنامه نقد و نظر
سال بیست و دوم شماره 3 (پیاپی 87، پاییز 1396)

For Kant as an influential philosopher in the modern period, the question of the meaning of life is highly significant, since he provides specific and influential answers to important questions of the meaning of life in the main parts of his philosophy, that is, epistemology, ethics and the philosophy of religion. By relying on epistemological and ontological humanism in his epistemological system, Kant restricts meaningfulness to the material world and the boundaries of empirical sciences, and excludes it from metaphysics. Then, in his ethics, Kant focuses on the human being as the foundation and the end of morality, and thus, he provides moral answers to metaphysical questions about God, freedom and immortality, and thus, the religion is taken to depend on the human being, trying to de-theologize the religion by reducing it into a totally human phenomenon matching the human rationality in which God is just a servant of human tendencies. Prima facie, Kant's thought appears to construct a novel meaning for human's life, but his exaggeration in humanism and humanly interpretations of ethics and religion has led to the relativity and plurality of ethics and the religion, which leads, in turn, to their inefficiency in responding to the human fundamental questions and the true happiness, which amounts to the meaninglessness of the modern human life.

Today, the examination of the meaning and the nature of the meaning of life has turned into a significant problem in philosophy of life, which is not irrelevant to important issues such as value, purpose, God, death, and faith. In the meanwhile, influential authors in literature and philosophy have, in addition to their deep concerns with the problem of the meaning of life, brought about admirable analyses and meaning transformations for their readers. Tolstoy, the influential author in the 19th century, was deeply concerned with the problem of meaning, value, nihilism, and God, in his work, such as A Confession, Ana Karenina, War and Peace, and The Death of Ivan Ilyich. A detailed consideration of Tolstoy’s work and life reveals that he passed through three stages of the meaning of life—the meaning as moral perfection as the value, the meaning as the achievement of money, fame and wealth as purposes, and the meaning as value of the life obtained through qualities or actions—to come with a value in the fourth stage of his life that is obtained in light of a renewed faith in God.

Abortion is an important issue in medical ethics, which has in recent decades concerned moral philosophers. Baruch A. Brody is a moral philosopher who claims that none of the extant suggestions for the onset or beginning of the human life of the fetus can be a necessary property of its humanity; suggestions such as the first movement of the fetus in the womb, its being perceived by other humans, viability of living outside the womb, and independent existence. He tried to discover the beginning of the human life of the fetus through the analysis of death, holding that since a human is considered as dead after irreparable cessation of his or her brain, or alternatively put, after the brain death when it is no longer considered as a human, the beginning of the human life should be taken to be the onset of its brain functions. Brody claims that a fetus begins its brain functions in a period from the second week to the end of the third month, and so a fetus turns into a human being at some point during this period, and it is in this period that abortion is morally wrong. In this paper, we will review and criticize Baruch Brody’s view.

How rationality and religiosity agree is a significant problem for the scholars of religion and philosophy as indicated by various and sometimes conflicting views suggested in this regard. Religiosity consists in a conclusive acceptance of the principles and detailed doctrines of the religion as is meant by it in fact, and rationality consists in discovering the reality on the basis of the acceptance of the pure, necessarily true principles of the reason. The fact that many great philosophers throughout the history, including Muslim philosophers, have been scholars of religion as well might imply an agreement between rationality and religiosity, but an account needs to be provided of how the two agree. Specific features of the reason’s questions and a priori answers can be taken as a starting point of showing such an agreement, as well as an account of a relationship between the reason and the religion and the significance of the reason in religion. Taking some conditions into account, the agreement extends to questions and answers at the next level, all of which are acquired types of knowledge having different features. In this paper, I have sought to articulate the method of Muslim philosophers in establishing a connection between pure philosophical research and speculative research in religious texts and doctrines as well as the place of either of these for them, in order to show such an agreement not only as a matter of fact, but also as intertwined in these two types of research.

In this paper, I have examined the nature and the process of the Divine Word being sent to the Prophet from the viewpoint of Avicenna and Fakhr Rāzī. We can see a remarkable common ground between the two views. They both ignore the role of a supernatural entity in this process, pointing to the peculiar capacity of the receiver’s soul; they both believe in a “Holy Power” (or faculty), taking the location of the perception to be the hearth of the Prophet which is a stage higher than the Rational Soul (al-nafs al-nāiqa), although they hold that rational truths can only be perceived by the lower stage of the soul, that is the senses, when they turn into words. Thus, it can be said that the Prophet’s rational and imaginative faculties should not be overlooked. We can come to two conclusions from the above: first, given Fakhr Rāzī’s view about the principle, “al-nafs fī wadatihā kull al-quwā” (the soul is, in its unity, all the faculties), Avicenna’s problem initiated by the belief in the Spherical Soul (al-nafs al-falakīyya) will not suggest itself, and thus, the Prophet’s soul can be taken into account both at the general stage and in more detail. Second, the quality of the Prophet’s involvement in the revelation (wahy) will thus be obvious.

In his work, Rene Descartes has referred to the effect of mathematics on his mind. He, as a founder of algebra and analytic geometry, believes that it is only the mathematical knowledge that can properly be called “knowledge”. However, the question is why the Cartesian method is referred to by some of his commentators as well as the majority of Persian sources as a “geometrical” method, while most scholars have emphasized on his mathematical method. Descartes paved the ground for mathematical physics. For him, geometrical features such as point, dimension, and extension are essential to the matter. I believe that the emphasis on his geometrical method and the priority of geometry amounts to the priority of the material substance and materialism in Descartes, which is in conflict with Cartesian views, because he believed in souls and God as two immaterial substances. In his philosophy, mathematics is originated in the reason and rationality, and mathematical proofs are certain and clear just because of their rational origins. However, the mathematics involved in the mathematical method is not the general ordinary mathematics; rather it is the mathematics that was divided, since the time of Aristotle, into “pure mathematics” and “applied mathematics”. This paper seeks an answer to the following questions: what is the difference between the geometrical and mathematical methods? In which of the two is there more clarity, distinctness and certainty? For Descartes, what problems can be solved by the mathematical method and what problems can be solved by the geometrical method?

The model of being a philosopher is, in general, a metaphorical framework in which and as a representation of which a philosopher shapes his or her philosophy and philosophizing. I think that a reflection on the history of philosophy can reveal traces of models for philosophy and doing philosophy. I hold that Emanuel Kant has deployed, in all three of his well-known critiques, architectural terms. This implies that for Kant, philosophers should be considered as architects. For him, a philosopher as an architect is neither like a mason who only constructs repetitive buildings, leading to an ordinary philosophy; nor like artists or other scientists who only master the technique of using their intellects. Rather, a philosopher as an ideal teacher is the law-maker of the intellect who is in charge of founding and regulating the philosophy. In other words, a philosopher defines and regulates the intellect. This model of being a philosopher was suggested along with other models proposed before and after Kant, and has played its role in the period of Kant and later periods of the history of philosophy.