“Man”, Epistemological Origin of Mystical Toleration with an Emphasis on Imam Khomeini’s Views

Today, toleration is an important social and political behavior in addition to being an ethical pattern. Many philosophers have placed emphasis on the need for practicing social toleration along with observing such behavior in personal relations. Recommendations on observing this type of toleration come from pluralism based on certain viewpoints in epistemology. An instance is Kant’s distinction between phenomena and noumena, a theory that was generalized by John Hick and introduced into religious epistemology and also into the issue of salvation as a concept attributed to the Muslim mystics in order to ultimately serve as a reason for recommendations on social-political toleration. This work intends to narrate and take a critical approach toward the theory and generalization by Hick in a bid to introduce a substitute theory for pluralism. Based on the proposed model taken from mysticism and enriched by Imam Khomeini’s views, “man” is the origin of toleration as the best manifestation; hence, toleration is not a product of pluralism but an outcome of transcendental anthropology. This model results in distinction between beliefs on one side and their proponents on the side so that the person can be held at a position to be critical of the beliefs and procedures, to tolerate proponents of such beliefs and associated factors, and to avoid falling to the illogical outcomes of the pluralists or the shallow bias of the monopolists.