فصلنامه نقد و نظر
سال بیست و دوم شماره 1 (پیاپی 85، بهار 1396)

In Christian theology as well as Islamic mysticism, the “Divine Word” is considered as the medium for the creation of beings. In Christianity, the Divine Word is Logos which is the subject-matter of the first sentences of the Gospel of John. In Islamic mysticism, the Divine Word is the same as “al-Kalimat al-Muḥammadīyya” (Muhammadi Word) or “al-Ḥaqīqat al-Muḥammadīyya” (Muhammadi Truth). The fact that the being of two human persons, Jesus the Christ and Muhammad, is the origin of the creation of other beings is an instance of a doctrine in religious studies which has come to be known as the “anthropocosmic vision, and is, in fact, a common mystical doctrine in all authentic Abrahamic religions. However, there is a difference between Christian theology and Islamic mysticism over how to elaborate the issue. In Christianity, the Divine Word is embodied, that is, it comes to have a body as one of the three persons of Trinity, but in Islamic mysticism, the “Divine” Word manifests without losing its exalted position. In this paper, I will elaborate this issue.

A significant debate within the intellectual community of early Muslims was the relationship between human volitional acts and the system of divine acts, with each school of thought taking a different position concerning it. In general, there are four theories about the relationship: absolute “jabr” or predetermination, absolute “tafwīḍ” or freedom (delegation of affairs to human beings), the theory of “kasb” (acquisition), and the theory of “al-amrbayn al-amrayn” (something between the two things). The first three theories are propounded by Sunni scholars, and the last theory is propounded by the followers of the Prophet’s (s) household or Ahl al-Bayt. The problem with the first three theories is that they contradict certain religious doctrines. The theory of “al-amrbayn al-amrayn” rejects both absolute predetermination and absolute freedom, but its positive proposal has been differently accounted for by Imami scholars. The Shiite philosopher, Sabzawari, has tried to provide a rational or philosophical account of the theory in terms of the ontological principle of the “personal unity of the reality of existence”. His account is examined in this paper.

Ṣadr al-Muta’allihīnShīrāzī seeks to show the immortality of the human soul on the basis of certain grounds, such as the principality of existence, gradation of existence, substantial motion, the physical incipience of the soul, and the division of the world into the world of matter, the world of barzakh, and the world of intellects. With these grounds at hand, MullāṢadrā shows that the human soul is created as a material entity early in its existence, and then it goes on a substantial motion. During the motion or change in its essence, the material soul turns into an immaterial entity, and then it finds an eternal life in the world of intellects. According to his view, the souls that could not achieve the degree of immateriality in this world will continue their substantial motion in the world of barzakh until they join the world of intellects. However, MullāṢadrā’s view is subject to objections. In this paper, we will examine and criticize some of the grounds for the immortality of the soul in MullāṢadrā’s view.

As a religious doctrine and principle, the resurrection has always been a concern for thinkers. As a Muslim philosopher, Ibn Sīnā takes the bodily resurrection to be a transmitted and accepted religious doctrine, but the problem in his philosophical analyses is the possibility or impossibility of the bodily resurrection. Ibn Sīnā’s views in this regard seem prima facie self-contradictory. In this paper, we seek to show that Ibn Sīnā’s final view is that the bodily resurrection is philosophically impossible, but since religions have to guide all people to happiness and the spiritual resurrection and most people fail to understand the truth of the spiritual resurrection, the prophets had to cash out the spiritual resurrection in an analogical way in terms of bodily resurrection. The analogical language of the religion about the bodily resurrection does not mean that there is no truth in it; rather it involves a secret known by wise people.

Al-Fakhr al-Rāzī takes human souls to be like a pyramid on top of which is the “Perfect Person” with respect to the substance, the path to God, and practical and theoretical commitment to religious doctrines. He takes the perfection of human persons to depend on two types of affairs: generative (takwīnī) and legislative (tashrī’ī), on the condition that the soul has an essential potentiality for the perfection. The Perfect Human, in al-Fakhr al-Rāzī’s model, is the manifestation of divine lights, aware of the secrets of the creations of the worlds of “amr” and “khalq”, and connected to the lights of the sacred worlds and immaterial spirits. Such a human person has perfected his soul in all aspects (faculties) in light of the doctrines of the revelation (waḥy) and rational development. He believes that it is necessary for the “Perfect Human” to exist at any time, taking him to be the condition for the perfection of other human beings. Al-Rāzī’s view in this regard is so similar to that of the Imamiyya concerning the problem of Imamate that he takes the Infallible Imam of the Imamiyya to be an instance of the “Perfect” Human. In his view, imperfect souls can be places for the manifestation of divine lights via their connections to Perfect Souls. In this paper, we will describe and analyze the place of the Perfect Human in the view of al-Fakhr al-Rāzī.

This paper deals with an examination of the notion of philosophy in the view of Max Horkheimer. Horkheimer distinguishes two types of reason: subjective and objective, arguing that the contemporary western thought has been subject to a crisis as a result of the dominance of the subjective reason. This crisis of inconsistency shows itself, inter alia, in relativistic and dogmatic views to the notion of truth. Horkheimer seeks a way out of the crisis in a dialectical notion of philosophy. This paper deals with Horkheimer’s analysis of the two types of reason as well as an elaboration of contradictions resulting from the dominance one type of reason over the other. In particular, I have examined Horkheimer’s view about the notion of truth and sought to answer the question of whether his philosophy is able to provide an intermediate notion of truth that can equally avoid dogmatism and relativism.