The Patterns of Goal-oriented Epistemology

The ancients, following Aristotle, used to classify sciences according to their subject criterion. This criterion had created such problems as non-comprehensiveness of all sciences and not achieving a comprehensive classification of sciences, etc. For example, the problems of some sciences like theology, principles of jurisprudence, or jurisprudence and law, or history and geography, etc. do not enjoy such a relationship to their subjects and not all their problems signify the inherent accidents of their subjects. It was here that some scholars such as Muḥaqqiq Khurāsānī and many of the legal theoreticians (uṣūlīs) after him, resorted to “goal” (ghāyat). This viewpoint, that has been formed because of the deficiency of the Aristotelian epistemology pattern, has itself suffered from deficiencies, which has prompted the scholars followed by the author of Al-Kifāya to undertake some modifications on it; some consider the (subject-oriented) Aristotelian epistemology pattern as more efficient; and yet another group present a third pattern apart from these and even find tendency toward eclectic and conventional approaches.