فصلنامه تاریخ فلسفه
سال هفتم شماره 4 (پیاپی 28، بهار 1396)

Undoubtedly, the history of philosophy follows a continuous and successive process of development in the course of human life. Although inventions and new problems and topics have always been witnessed and warmly welcomed in this field, they have never interrupted the continuous process of development of thought in the realm of philosophy. In fact, philosophy, which is the most illuminating dimension of human intellection on the history of thoughts, is responsible for the rational explanation of the most important issues in human life. Undoubtedly, one of the most important of all of them is clarifying the relationship between the Creator or Maker of the world and existents and creatures. Now, if we consider the rise of philosophy in Greece as a crucial event in the history of philosophy, the quality of the philosophical approach to prime matter and, then, the issue of the first emanated are viewed as two of the most significant and fascinating topics in this field. Following an analytic approach, the writers have tried to study the historical background of the first emanated in the history of Islamic philosophy (intellect as the first creation) with reference to Greek philosophy in this regard. The writers assume that the history of philosophy in Islamic civilization has been developed by deliberating over some Greek thoughts and has established the foundation of its own philosophical structure through a profound review of philosophical resources, such as the Qur’an and traditions, as the absolute center of this enterprise.

Scepticism was one of the most important products of a transition period which emerged in the world of Islam in the form of a philosophical movement called Sophism. According to a number of Muslim mutakallimun, including the “Inadiyyah”, “Indiyyah”, and “agnostics”, Muslim sceptics, led by a person called Salih Ibn ‘Abdulquddus, were a group who, similar to Greek and Indian sophists and sceptics, mainly appeared in the Islamic civilization as a philosophical movement or trend rather than a philosophical school. They denied the truth and originality of both “subject” and the “object”, and, in their view, everything merely enjoyed an imaginal, illusory, and conjectural existence. The vigorous confrontation of theologians, particularly, the Mu‘tazilite, natural and logical philosophers, and Sufist thinkers, such as Ghazzali, with this trend resulted in the quick annihilation of this group so that there has rarely remained any reference to the names of their advocates or their works in history. Of course, Muslim sceptics also played a role in undermining the teachings adopted from sense perception and rational sciences and, as a result, attracting the attention of Muslim thinkers to presential instead of acquired knowledge and persuading them to develop an interest in gnosis and Sufism instead of science and philosophy.

Henry Corbin (1903-1978), the French philosopher, is the first western interpreter of Suhrawardi’s philosophy. His thoughts are focused on the fields of t’awil (esoteric interpretation), phenomenology, and the theory of meta-history. The present study aims to explain and examine this theory and its impact on Corbin’s study of Iranian-Islamic philosophy and gnosis. In the realm of theoretical studies of history, the philosophy of history derives from philosophical studies and, accordingly, investigates history and historical events and incidents. In Corbin’s view, it is not possible to investigate the reporting of the history of philosophy based on the theory of the philosophy of history because one cannot describe historical events based on cause-effect relationships. Corbin’s view in this regard is rooted in theology. In fact, he has employed a theological approach in order to interpret the relationship between history and human beings; the philosophical periods of ancient Iran; Islamic philosophy and, particularly, the philosophical school of Suhrawardi (540-587 AH), and gnosis. He has attributed the issues related to the mentioned fields to the world of Ideas. Corbin benefitted from the theories of Edmund Husserl (1859-1928) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1996) in order to pose the theory of meta-history. The present paper is a first attempt at examining and analyzing Henry Corbin’s theory of meta-history.

Uthulujia by Plotinus, which had been mistakenly attributed to Aristotle for many years, has influenced all Muslim philosophers, including Mulla Rajabali Tabrizi and Mulla Sadra. Although both philosophers were contemporary with each other, followed the School of Isfahan, dealt with similar problems, and resorted to Uthulujia in order to confirm their own ideas and theories, they led two completely different philosophical trends in the history of philosophy and, in fact, stood against each other. Mulla Rajabali’s great attachment to Kalami issues persuaded him to believe that accepting the univocality of the Necessary Being and the possible beings and attributing different adjectives and qualities to the divine essence is far from God’s incomparability to other things and against Qur’anic verses and traditions. However, Mulla Sadra, in spite of his interest in Kalami and gnostic issues, believed that such problems could be solved in the light of his theory of the gradation of existence. Nevertheless, the noteworthy point is how is it possible for two philosophers with opposing ideas regarding different problems to have benefitted and quoted from the same book! Although the influence of Uthulujia over the philosophical and ideological principles of these two philosophers is undeniable, it seems that, since both believed that this book was written by Aristotle, whom both considered to be a divine philosopher, they tried to refer to this book in order to confirm their ideas and prove their validity. Thus each looked at Uthulujia from his own point of view and perceived its content based on his own ideas. Wherever they saw it consistent with their own principles, they quoted the related statements in order to confirm their ideas, and wherever they saw its content inconsistent with their views, they ignored it or tried to justify the case.

This paper examines the epistemology of the secondary intelligible, in general, and the quality of the truth of philosophical secondary intelligibles, in particular. It does so relying on an analytic study of the modes of the “accidence” and “qualification” of the secondary intelligibles in the views of such great philosophers as Farabi, Ibn Sina, Suhrawardi, and Mulla Sadra. The results of the present study indicate that all the above thinkers argue for the prevention of epistemological errors in the light of a clear explanation of the ontological existence of secondary philosophical intelligibles in the outside. Nevertheless, each of them has pursued a different approach towards attaining his goal based on his own philosophy. Finally, the writers conclude that Mulla Sadra’s epistemological analysis of philosophical intelligibles is a great step towards justifying the presence of such intelligibles in the outside. His analysis in this regard ultimately leads to his idea of the principiality of existence.

God’s Knowledge is one of the important philosophical problems whose various dimensions have continually been explored by different thinkers. In order to avoid the problem of change in divine essence, Ibn Sina argues that God’s Knowledge of particulars is possible through the knowledge of universals and causes. He also holds that the divine undifferentiated knowledge of existents is possible through imprinted forms. On the other hand, Muhaqqiq Tusi considers the necessary knowledge to belong to the category of relation and maintains that, in the Necessary Being’s Knowledge of changing particular affairs, some changes occur in the relation while the essence remains the same. Therefore, unlike Ibn Sina, Tusi accepts God’s Knowledge of particulars. He also criticizes Ibn Sina’s theory of the imprinting of established forms in the essence of the Necessary Being. Ibn Sina argues that the knowledge of divine essence through His Essence and the essential knowledge of imprinted forms, which is the cause of the appearance of existence, are of the presential type, while the differentiated knowledge of other existents is of the acquired type. In this paper, the writers explain and explore the philosophical principles of these two thinkers.

Hossein Ibn Mo‘in al-Din Meybodi, nicknamed Kamal al-Din, known as Qadi, with Mantiqi as his pen-name, is one of the great figures and distinguished scientific, literary, and philosophical characters of the land of Iran. He was born in Meybod in Yazd Province in the ninth century (AH). After learning the common preliminary intellectual and transmitted sciences of his time, he went to Shiraz in his youth and became a student of Dawani. Meybodi is a Muslim philosopher, an advocate of Shafi‘i school of thought, and a man of Tawalla (loving the People of the Prophet’s House). His love of the Commander of the Faithful (a) and the Pure and Infallible Household is so profound that some have considered him to be a Shi‘ite scholar. During the reign of Sultan Y‘aqub Aq Qoyunlu, he was a judge and the custodian of endowments of Yazd and its suburbs. His most important works include Sharh-i hidayah al-hikmah, Sharh-i diwan mansub bi Amir al-mu’minin (a), and Munsha’at. During the reign of Shah Isma‘il Safavi, when Mohammad Karra (ruler of Abarqu) captured the city of Yazd, Meybodi became his minister and, between 909 and 911 AH, when Shah Isma‘il recaptured Yazd, he was murdered on the King’s order. Meybodi believed that Illuminationists and Sufis (gnostics) were superior to theologians and Peripatetics and considered Peripatetic philosophy, which is based on rational deduction and reasoning, an immensely uncertain and ambiguous school which exhausts the intellect in the process of perceiving its fundamental principles. Unlike Ibn Sina, Suhrawardi, and Ibn Arabi, he was not the founder of a specific school of philosophy. However, given his accurate criticisms, investigations, and particular views regarding topics which interested theologians, Peripatetics, gnostics, and Illuminationists in the mould of a number of independent and dependent (commentaries and glosses) works, as a connecting link, he managed not only to play a significant role in developing Islamic philosophy and bringing the different philosophical trends and schools of his time together, but also become a source of inspiration for Mulla Sadra in developing the Transcendent Philosophy.