مجله تاملات فلسفی
پیاپی 4 (زمستان 1388)

Descartes is at the top of philosophers who follow epistemology through a systematic method; he does his best to infer all of knowledge through his proposed ways and by which he achieves certain knowledge. He considers some introductory requirements which are necessary to achieve knowledge. First, principles of knowledge, second, method and third, doubt, of course, the kind of doubt which is a tool for Certainty. On the other hand, Sohrawardi criticizes the peripatetic philosophy which is merely rational and based-on-demonstrative, and changes the basis of knowledge and cognition in his philosophy. Through proposing the idea of knowledge by presence and mysticalintuition which can be achived by soul, he considers this way as the only way to achieve the genuine knowledge; therefore, he believes that in the knowledge and purification of soul, not only one should try worldly belongings but also entrnal and external senses and any material thing to be prepared to achieve knowledge. From similarities between two philosophers, it can be mentioned that both of them emphasize on the self knowledge and understanding the soul as the basis of all knowledge. From differences of these two philosophers, it can be noticed that Descartes considers reason as the only way toget knowledge while owing subject Sohrevardi regards the mixture of reason and intuition, as the way to get knowledge.

This article considers the relationship between ethics and theology in Levine’s thought. According to Levinas, the concept of “Same” and “Other” in his philosophy serves as a basis of theology or metaphysics. In a non-ontological interpretation, he considers God as “absolute Other” and then considers the human subjectivity and infinite idea as foundation of ethics, hence he inserts theology into ethics. For him, theology should be pursuit divine direction though faces to face relation not ontological relation between God and human. Levinas holds that the subject has ethical foundation. Levinas maintains that western philosophy often was ontology and therefore it reduced the “Other” or “Alterity” to “Same” and this reduction has ethical meaning. So, the mistake of western philosophy, according to him, is establishing metaphysics upon ontology instead on social ethics. Contrary to traditional ethics within same is important, Levinas’s ethics is based on the other. New humanism of Levinas emerged from this nontraditional attitude to ethics. God who Levinas speaks of is nither ontological nor immanent, rather is an infinit and “external” God. He employs husserlian phenomenological method for analyzing the relationship between ethics and theology. This article tries to explain the essence of ethics and theology in order to show the unity between them.

Karl Jaspers, as a German existentialist philosopher, tries to fill the gap between ancient epistemology and ontological philosophies by recognizing the realms of being. Their mistake was that they conceived the realms of being are unique and that they could be studied objectively with a single method. However, Jaspers maintained that being has different realms which must be studied with different methods. He recognized six realms of being: Dasein (or world), Ichsein (or my-being) and An-sich-sein (or Transcendance), and Ichsein's four states: Dasein, universal understanding, sprit, Existenz. These realms of being must be studied using different methods. Dasein is studied by means of empirical method, which is a matter of Empiricism, Pragmatism and Positivism; Universal understanding is a matter of rationalism; Spirit is something related to Hegelian rationalism. And Existenz is a matter of existentialist philosophy. Transcendence is a fact that surpasses the universe and can be reached only by a human with Existenz, and it cannot be understood through perception or reason.

The concept of truth is one of the main concepts of philosophy which has a central role in several areas such as logic, semantic and metaphysic. The relation of this concept with realism is the main discussion in the contemporary analytic philosophy. In this respect, the first question is the one that whether it is possible to answer the problem of realism by analyzing the concept of truth. In this article I consider two groups of the contemporary theories of truth to compare their consequences in the realism debate.

One of the most important issues in Davari’s thought is the problem of the West and Occidentalism and also conditions of encounter between us and the West. In his holistic view, he regards West as an independent nature that we can not encounter with it selectively; that is adapting something and excluding others. In his view, west and becoming westernalized is our destiny. Considering the foundations of west is what really matters. In this encounter, democracy, freedom and development have a central importance. He sees the modern democracy as unauthentic democracy. This democracy is inevitable, depending on natural rights. Davari reminds us these foundations. He regards himself as a critic of western democracy. He does not depend his critique on any particular ideological foundation, but on hope to emergence of spiritual thought. Freedom is not unconstratation but truth. Regarding his theory about freedom as a fascist theory is not but conflation of politics and philosophy orders. On the issue of development, he knows that as growth and progress of science and establishing a system of certain relations that is universal and unique. Thus, all of us, finally, will reach to the one and same end, that is the world of unauthentic technical world.

The Ethical view of Ibn-Meskavayh- the sage and the scholar of the 4th and 5th Hejira- is a kind of virtue ethics. From this aspect, he owes, to a great extent, Aristotelian thought. Virtue Ethics is one of the divisions of Normative Ethics. In developing his ethical system, Ibn-Meskavayh is known as one of the pioneers of Muslim philosophers in Ethics who attempted to establish his ethical system in Islamic world. Ibn-Meskavayh was obviously influenced by Greek philosophers, however his impression from religious learning of Quran and Islamic tradition is undeniable. By combining the Greek philosophers’ thoughts and Islamic thoughts, he attempted to establish religiously virtue Ethics properly, whose results have been used for centuries by researchers of Ethics. In this paper, through analyzing the nature of virtue Ethics, we will try to clarify Ibn-Meskavayh Ethical statues by considering his Ethical arguments to find out the importance of religious beliefs in developing his Ethical system.

In this paper, Richard Swinburne considers the relationship between God and Morality. The chief question is that whether or not actions can be morally understood as good or bad, being independent from God’s commands. Swinburne maintains that humans have grown in their understanding of which kinds of actions are morally obligatory or wrong, or any other kinds of action independently. He argues that the existence and actions of God make no difference to the fact that there are necessary moral truths, but that they make a great difference to what those moral truths are. However, the existence and actions of God can make a great difference to what are the contingent truths. In virtue of the necessary truth that people are obliged to obey benefactors of a certain kind, and a contingent non-moral truth that a benefactor of that kind. So, God has reasons to command us to do various acts, and his command to do them would impose on us an obligation to do them.