The Confrontation of Islamic Philosophers  with Western Epistemology

Islamic epistemology is one of the nascent sciences in the system of philosophical sciences. The purpose of this article is to explain the necessity and relation of this knowledge with other human knowledges by the method of intellectual analysis of the epistemological identity of this knowledge, and then portray the story of this science among Islamic sciences. According to the most important findings of this article, the great contemporary philosopher Allāma Tabātabāī should be considered the founder of this knowledge in the Islamic world, who after the arrival of materialistic philosophies and positivist ideas of the West to Iran, he correctly understood the necessity of this to deal with these ideas in a scholarly manner. After him, other contemporary Muslim philosophers continued this path and expanded this knowledge by organizing, classifying, and codifying epistemological issues and deepening and consolidating its issues by theorizing; As they used epistemological views in solving the problems of other sciences, especially religious knowledge. The use of epistemology in explaining Islamic teachings and defending them against the onslaught of views imported from Christian theology has been one of the most brilliant results of the presence and expansion of this knowledge in the realm of Islamic intellectual sciences. It seems that in the future, one of the most important fruits of this knowledge can be providing the epistemological foundations of human sciences.