نشریه پژوهش های فلسفی
پیاپی 15 (زمستان 1393)

Rashid al-Din Watwat (d. 1183) has a treatise criticizing indirect proof (reduction ad absurdum). His main goal in the treatise is criticize Ibn-Sina who had been freely using indirect proofs in his logical books such as al-Shifa for demonstrating the validity of the conversions of modal propositions. Watwat shows that indirect proof can only demonstrate the truth of the consequence and fails to determin the strongest consequence. His criticism exited decisive responses from contemporaries such as Ibn Ghaylan al-Balkhi and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, and was a prologue to new criticisms to indirect proof by Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi. Watwat’s treatise had been edited and published by Muhammad Taqi Danesh Pajouh. But the mistakes in the edition and finding a new manuscript of the treatise encouraged us to reedit and research it and add a brief introduction to the subject