فصلنامه معرفت فلسفی
سال پانزدهم شماره 1 (پیاپی 57، پاییز 1396)

The two philosophical terms ‘essential being’ and ‘accidental being’ are keys to the understanding of some of the most important foundations in transcendental theosophy. The present article is seeking to clarify the nature of these two terms in Mulla Sadra and its distinction from their meanings in the Isharqi (illuminative philosophy) viewpoint. This is because in the system of Ishraq’s theosophy, the nature of essential and accidental beings is merely rational and subjective, with no objective determination, whether independent or abstract. In the system of transcendental theosophy, however, the existence is the essential being, and all its external attributions are accidental beings, requiring a mediator of attribution. This medium which makes those attributes to be metaphorically described as existent, and only abstractly actualizing them in the outside world, has its roots in the existential unitary relationship of those attributes with the core of existence. In Mulla Sadra’s view, these accidental beings have at least two instances as far as the various types of existential relationship are concerned: the primary intelligibles, and secondary philosophical intelligibles. Each of these two instances is metaphorically present in the real world in its unique way. The metaphorical existence of primary intelligibles is called nafaadi mode, and the metaphorical existence of secondary philosophical intelligibles is called indemaji mode.

In Mulla Sadra’s view, knowledge and perception are among abstract notions, and the extent of knowledge is directly related to the strength and weakness of abstraction. In Mulla Sadra’s view, the faculty of illusion is the very reason added to the sensory or imaginational details. According to this definition, thus, illusive perception essentially leads to reduction of abstraction and, accordingly, to weakness of perception. Besides, among the features of illusive perception is indecisiveness and lack of dogmatism. In other words, illusion and illusive perception does not achieve certainty and right knowledge. In addition, illusion is the ruler of the minute animal faculties and tries to take most of those faculties and fulfilling the highest points of desire and anger. Thus, it is in conflict with reason and rational perception, and reason is seeking to limit and modify those faculties. Therefore, the discussion on illusion and illusive perceptions is related to the discussion on error in perception. Here, the research method is descriptive-analytical.

Being committed to the philosophical rule of “any originated being is preceded by the potentiality of existence and the matter carrying it”, which necessitates the impossibility of creating an originated being from nothingness, is on the one hand opposing the religious texts and on the other hand causes suggestion of a very peculiar interpretation of some of the miracles narrated in the Holy Quran. Since interpreting religious texts contrary to their appearance without a definite reason is not permissible in Islamic Religious Law, it seems probable that the abovementioned rule is not based on the explicit reason and resulted from the completely rational argumentation. This important issue led the writer to conclude that not only the proofs of that rule are not complete, but also they – even if complete – are based on the theory of ‘generation and corruption’. The theory of essential movement – which is well known and popular for most scholars – not only leaves no instance for the subject of that rule, but also necessitates the impossibility of precedence of temporal origination to the matter. Thus, it is not necessary to interpret religious texts contrary to their appearance and accepting the peculiar interpretation for miracles.

In the modern era, we frequently see readings of Peripatetic philosophy on the basis of Mulla Sadran view and New-Mulla Sadran views for the idea of ‘the way of realization of philosophical concepts’, readings that are rejected and not defendable according to the bases of Peripatetic philosophy and the extant works as well as the readings of the most prominent expositors and critiques of Peripatetic philosophy, including Mulla Sadra. Today, those views are often attributed to Peripatetic philosophers; they consider philosophical concepts existing in the external world in the form of analytical accident and united to the carrier of the accident. However, referring to the extant works of Peripatetic philosophers leads us to a series of bases in Peripatetic philosophy according to which Peripatetic philosophy lacks, in principle, the capacity to propose the theory of analytical accident and unity of accident and its carrier; besides, according o the same bases, the mode of existence of the accidents is merely possible in concrete form. It is, however, necessary to note that, as we find in Avicenna’s works, he sometimes believes in the unity of several contradictory concepts in a single one. We evaluate this view as the rare and uncommon view in Peripatetic philosophy; however, the same view was known as the common view on the way philosophical concepts are realized.

Most Muslim thinkers believe in physical-spiritual resurrection. Believing in being resurrected with physical body – even through an imitation of religion – necessitates proving this doctrine’s being rational and not being contrary to reason as its precondition. Those who believe in resurrection in spiritual form or those who believe in resurrection with an ideal body regarded accepting physical resurrection as facing with some rational limitations such as reincarnation and uselessness of the elemental body in the hereafter. Such philosophical objections are mainly based on the psychology maintaining that the soul is spiritually originated and there is a categorical relationship between body and soul. They may have neglected their relationship as the status and the owner of the status. here, we have attempted to use a descriptive-analytical method to explain that through a certain analysis in the relationship of soul and body, neither the limitation of Avicenna’s reincarnation (existence of two souls in one body) nor the limitation of Mulla Sadra’s reincarnation (potentiality of an actual affair) is necessary. In this explanation, the truth of the human is neither the abstract spirit nor the material body; rather, it is a comprehensive being including all these orders and, thus, if the man is to return in the hereafter, he will return with his both elemental and spiritual dimensions.

Knowledge and science enjoyed some sort of unity and solidarity before modernity and the modern age. Although science included various domains, those domains formed a single unit in linking to one another and were not separable from one another. When the modernity began, however, there appeared a detachment and separation among different domains of human knowledge. The interdisciplinary studies movement, the systematic thought and some cultural and philosophical trends in the West, while considering the unitary among sciences, began to criticize the movement of modern science in the path of specialization and stressed that the specialist view lacks the necessary efficiency for fulfilling the needs and resolving the issues related to the Western civilization. In the present research, while critically introducing some Unitarian trends in the sphere of science, we investigate and analyze it from the view point of Islamic theosophy. It seems that science, in this view, enjoys some sort of solidarity and unity which was called philosophy (or theosophy) in our classic literature.

The present article briefly explains Frege’s theory of proper names and investigates the objections presented by Kripke to that theory. The writers distinguish the two different versions of Frege’s theory – also acknowledged by Kripke – and hold that the first version is defeated in facing with Kripke’s objection regarding the necessity in possible worlds. Then, they state two readings (subjective and objective) of the second version of Frege’s theory, and accept Kripke’s objection to the objective reading by adducing the errors of the speakers in connecting one group of attributes to an external referent. The writers, however, offer Kripke’s various objections to the subjective reading to defend it against those objections; except for the existential statements (affirmative and negative), they answer all other objections regarding the puzzles of ‘identity’ and ‘substitution’ and so on. The article concludes that the subjective reading of the second version of Frege’s theory has the least drawbacks and the most power to explain, and seems more justified in comparison to the two groups of ‘denotation/ direct reference’ and the ‘first version of Frege’s theory’.

Solipsism is one of the important current challenges in the Western philosophy, and identifying the backgrounds and philosophical factors for its emergence and expansion is of importance from different aspects. In the present article, we have used the library research method along with rational analysis to evaluate the relationship between solipsism and Descartes’ philosophy. Thus, we first identified solipsism and its two main types – i.e. “ontological solipsism” and “epistemological solipsism” – and then explained Descartes’ doubts (perceptual illusion, dream problem, deceiving God and evil demon). Besides, we have investigated the relationship between each of these doubts and solipsism, and their efficiency in proving solipsism. In the last step, Descartes’ theory of knowledge has been introduced and its effect on preparing the ground and diffusion of solipsist views in the West has been investigated.