نشریه معرفت فرهنگی اجتماعی
سال سوم شماره 1 (پیاپی 9، زمستان 1390)

Beauty as one of the man's oldest and most established natural desires and art as the practical manifestation of this desire in man's life are two most important categories which have deep relationship with religion, ethics, and many other domains of man's life. Hence, there is an overwhelming necessity of doing fundamental and applied research on the issue, especially with a domestic and religious look, due to increasingly extensive impact of art on modern man's personal and social life. The present paper, which is dedicated to the study of Ayatollah Misbah's views on religious art and committed artist, first mentions his views on art and beauty, their relationships, relationship between them and values, and relativism in art. Then, it seeks to investigate those factors which strengthen "Islamic and religious art. It goes on to deal with symbolism and expressive factors in these arts and finally explores the features of committed artist and makes an assessment of the priorities in the field of art in the religious educational system.

With the claim of defending women's rights in western civilization and using its principles and foundations, feminism entered into socio-political thoughts trying to make women participate and play significant role in different domains of social life. Having reanalyzed the factors which have made women inferior, it struggles to remove them. With such an aim, it reviewed and analyzed the history of art and aesthetics. Feminists mainly focus on the analysis of cultural life with respect to sexual difference between male and female. They pose the main question: "Why do women have no status in arts?" They believe that history of art and aesthetics has never recognized women's art and emphasized on neglecting women's artistic creativity by promoting special thoughts and adopting particular policies. Instead, it has caused women's inferiority by identifying their body as the theme of artistic production. In order to confront male–oriented history of art, feminists have used different strategies to create artistic works and have prepared the ground for women's more presence in different artistic fields by criticizing traditional philosophy and history of art. However, since feministic art has neglected woman's real personality, has been unrealistic, and has gone to extremes in providing strategies, it has not only been of no help to reduce women's oppression but also has paved the way for other kinds of oppression.

"The theory of genesis" depicts a divine, comprehensive, unchangeable, non-acquired, and immune- against- error essence for man that other creatures do not enjoy. Therefore, genesis differentiates man from other creatures. The entrance of concept of "genesis" into the foundations of different sciences has had many cognitive consequences. The cultural theory is one of those sciences that have attained some important scientific achievements after adopting the concept of "genesis". Such issues as "basing the duration of cultures on natural elements", "using divine nature by all cultures", "accepting some cultural differences among societies as valid", "analyzing cultural crises based on genesis", "accepting the fact that all cultures can transcend", "believing that communications are natural, "the possibility of dialogue between cultures with the language of genesis", "essential compatibility of cultures with religious culture", and "formulating cultural policy making based on the theory of genesis" are some significations of the theory of genesis in cultural theory which have been analyzed and criticized in this paper.

These models provided by any system or culture through its cultural products like movies are the best indexes for evaluating its cultural function. Cinemas in Iran can provide society with the personality model of Muslim man and woman as the most important models. Cinema is expected to provide a proper personality model of man or woman through its realism and knowledge based on Islamic culture. The present paper seeks to study man's personality in Islamic-Iranian culture and compare it with the personality model presented in a movie called "the Fifth Reaction". The Islamic dimension of this culture is based on religious texts and its Iranian dimension is based on Sadi's poems. The movie "Fifth Reaction" is also analyzed using narrative analysis and John Fiske's semiotics, as an example. The results showed that the characteristics provided in this movie as a Muslim man's characteristic are not compatible with Islamic culture; rather, they are mostly in contradiction with this culture.

Transcendent philosophy is an Islamic treasure which has many denotations and implications for formulating the philosophy of social sciences in order that we can make a change in these sciences. To achieve this end, we should frame some questions related to the philosophy of social sciences and pose them on this philosophical system so that we may achieve its denotations and implications based on transcendent philosophy. The present paper has used an analytical-argumentative method. Transcendent philosophy believes in an existence beyond humans understanding and the social world in question is the very semantic sphere which is attained by man through his substantial motion in the light of unity among knowledge, knower and object of knowledge. If this semantic sphere is identical to a monotheistic semantic sphere, then it will actualize the utopia during its course of development; otherwise, it will enter non-utopia societies into history.

Each philosophical school provokes particular kinds of cultural theories by providing its anthropological, epistemological and ontological propositions. For example, the formation of phenomological thoery of culture was made possible by Husserl's philosophy, and Hegel's philosophy provided some axioms of Marxist cultural theory. "The Șadrian philosophical system" is no exception to the rule above and has the capacity for providing a clear theoretical framework to lay out a cultural theory. In recent years, researchers have commonly tried to propose the "theory of Sadrian culture" under the philosophical discussions about proving the existence of society. Since this theory has not been published in its totality and in a coherent way, the present paper tried to provide a coherent and organized version of theory of Șadrian culture and refer to its philosophical foundations.

Population control and its consequences have always been important and attractive issues. In some junctures in the history of our country, statesmen have focused on population increase and in others on population control and its decrease. After the victory of Islamic Revolution, the population control became a strategic policy the result of which is the problem of generation gap and extremely senescent population. Therefore, statesmen now emphasize on population increase and abandon the policy of population control. It seems that this aim as well as adopting preventive policy to achieve it necessitates attention to institutional, cultural, social, economical, structural, and contextual infrastructures along with cultural, religious, and social facilities, capacities, limitations, and components. Population increase cannot instantly be considered a bad policy and population control a good one or vice versa. Using an analytical approach and documentary review, the present paper explores the policy of population control and its consequences.