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سال یازدهم شماره 2 (پیاپی 79، پاییز و زمستان 1397)

Cultural Studies, fairly new in humanities, has been developed since 1980 s, specially in the U.S., as a method. Stuart Hall has developed this field in his Representation: Cultural Representations and signifying practices, and Encoding /Decoding, in the center of Contemporary Cultural Studies. Hall suggests that language is the representation of culture which is quite inseparable from it. The processes of encoding and decoding take place within and by means of culture and as the culture is perpetually moving and changing, significations and meanings getting shaped, not being static either, and are changing all the time, so the meaning is not fixed and unitary and is continuously getting constructed along with the changing culture. This is a common point between Hall and Ferdinand De Saussure. We owe the theory of representation and construction of the meaning to social and cultural factors emphasized by Saussure who for the first time questioned an essential link between the signifier and the signified, and so was a pioneer in the field of signification. This paper is to show that, although the culture and representation try to fix the meaning according to the norms of the leading culture and discourse, they deconstruct themselves at the same time and give way to new readings of them. So, unlike the leading culture and discourse, one can always create and build new meanings that each can be an event to deconstruct the culture and Art and lead them to new paths.

Word-image studies are one of the new areas of study that has attracted the attention of academics. Among the commonly used terms in this field is the term "ekphrasis". This term is mainly understood as a verbal description of a visual representation. But such an understanding does not accord with the classical meanings of this term. In order to get a better understanding of the meaning of "ekphrasis", it is important to investigate its philosophical-rhetorical background term known as enargeia. Enargeia means to describe and put before the eyes of the audience. While analyzing the rhetorical term of enargeia and comparing it with its affiliated concept of energeia, this paper would try to illustrate the philosophical significance of the term and extract its classical records as well. As a result, we will consider that the philosophical implications of the concepts that are used in the new field of word-image studies, are of utmost importance without which it would not be possible to advance the new studies appropriately.

In this paper, the concept "Academic Literacy" will be deeply studied. In this way, we will provide a historical perspective with the roots of the evolution of academic literacy derived from the relevant theoretical literature. Nevertheless, most importantly, in this article, we will seek to define academic literacy by describing very different perspectives, approaches and patterns that implies this very complex term. Then, we will look at the concept "literacy" derived from "New Literacy Studies", we will focus on academic discourses in relation to the scope of academic literacy, and we will focus on the role of "language competencies" in the development of academic literacy. At the end of the paper, later works on academic literacy will be discussed, and we will examine the issue of "the status of academic literacy in Iran's higher education system" with a critical interpretation. Therefore, all the issues discussed in this paper provide an appropriate perspective through which empirical work in this area of "academic development" can be analyzed.

Ibn Habib Neyshaboory in self' book –that it is classified as sufi literature- considers the kinds of madness. In this classification, never madness isn't conceived as illness and it isn't the contrast with rationality. A madman is a man who he chooses different style with public life and refuses formal normal. At a conclusion, a madman is representated as critic of society and politics. Madness is language of outcasts and isolated persons. Therefore, it is irony and overturne ethics-knowledge regime.Foucault, also, criticizes psychiatry' dividing practices that constitutes reason-madness polarity and denies a different ways of thinking. In view of Foucault, psychiatry is a apparatus for social control and rejaction of singular subjects. In this approach, Foucault's perpective becomes similar to Ibn Habib's.But, Foucault, against Ibn Habib, avoids romantic or essentialist interpretation about a innocent essence. Foucault considers refrence to pre-modern discourses as a regressive approach. He pays attention to madness concept because it make possible forms of informal politics: ways of practicing power down to up and pass out of dividing practices. It is beyond of good-bad or truth-false. But Ibn Habib, in sufi discourse, constitutes madness language as hegemonic discourse against philosophical discourse. This article make a comparison between Foucault and Ibn Habib and it transfers superficial similarity to discoursive difference.

The emphasis on content in “New Art”, made me review the dominant thoughts and ideas which had affected the canon according to the morals’ philosophy approach. Considering the relation of art and moralities, very strong and complicated connections and bonds exist which the contemporary aesthetics and the relation of art with human life with this regard could be extracted by relying on philosophers and theorists’ ideology, specifically the contemporary philosophers and theorists. Hereof, this survey tries to study the “New Art” based on the thoughts and ideology which had been presented by Levinas about morals’ philosophy. Levinas, a French- Lithuanian intellectual, whose ideas specifically in the realm of moralities are thought provoking and worth studying. This morality philosopher, declares that confronting with the “Other” is the alienation of “Phenomenology” and believes that this phenomenon is the end of subject’s Virility and championship. The researcher studied the art in the last few decades according to Levinas viewpoint and the moral aspect, and after the survey, she found out there is a connection between “learning audience” in the New Art and the “Other” by Levinas and herewith, this study aims to focus on the integration aspect of the “Other” in Levinas’ philosophy and the “New Art”.

Plato’s different and somehow contradictory views on etymology has long resulted in debates. In Cratylus and some other works he criticized etymology as a philosophical method. He denied any resemblance between things and their names so that the analysis of a name would not discover the essence of the thing. Yet he has practiced in his other works some etymological analyses which seems to be in opposition with his previous view and therefore there has been the debate if Plato at all believed in etymology as a philosophical method. Cratylus is generally believed as one of the so-called middle dialogues, i.e. those Plato wrote in the second phase of his philosophical career, while the aforementioned etymologies appear in the late dialogues. It shows that after Cratylus Plato in his late dialogues has changed his mind regarding etymology and its epistemological worth and subsequently inclined/tended to it. Plato disagrees etymology in Cratylus since he thinks the greek name-givers have failed to gain the truth about things so that the names they made do not correspond to the things themselves. The name-givers, called usually as law-givers by Plato, are the same ancestors who have founded/stablished the greek laws, norms, traditions and the opinions. In Cratylus Plato is suspicious to the knowledge of greek ancestors and his disagree with etymology is one of its consequences. However, in his later works because of some unknown reasons he changes his previous view and praised the ancestors’ virtues and confirmed their superior knowledge. Simultaneous with the change, and opposed to what we find in Cratylus, in later dialogues it is said that the greek names in all aspects correspond to the objects and this seems to be, according to Plato, due to name-giver’s knowledge of the things. Thus the reason why Plato has asserted different views on etymology seems to be that he has changed his view regarding the ancestors. In this article the passages with the subject names, namegivers and ancestors will be collected and analyzed.

The histories of philosophies regard Spinoza as a determinist vs. Descartes as a voluntarist. The former knows God as cuasa sui or immanent cause of all things, believes in the unity of substance, denies the free-will from both God and man, defines freedom as equal with free necessity, and finally, declares that the universe follows necessarily from God. Through these doctrines, it seems that Spinoza separates his line of though from that of Descartes. Spinoza raises some important objections against Descartes, one of which concerns with the free-will. But yet some scholars regard the Spinozan view on necessity as a kind of natural development within Cartesian framework. They claim that Spinoza's criticism on Descartes theory of free-will has no relation to the Cartesian main theme on freedom. As a result, if the Cartesian idea of freedom is read correctly off, its close relationship with the Spinozan one will be discovered. The present paper tries to show that in spite of spinozan criticisms against the Cartesian theory of free-will, there is no inconsistency between necessity and freedom concerning the highest degree of freedom for Descartes. To Descartes, in this level of freedom, there is no distinction between reason and will, so that one can be justified in saying that the Spinozan objection against the Cartesian idea of the absolute and free will cannot be raised.

There are two main theories about the nature of language understanding and its properties: perceptual and epistemic. Epistemic view believes that understanding a phrase is nothing but knowing its meaning. But perceptual view believes that to understand a bit of language is just like perception. This article introduces these two approaches and tries to examined them. As we try to show, language understanding in epistemic view is not in fact a kind of knowledge. For example, understanding a bit of language could be compatible with luck. Also, there are some familiarities between understanding a bit of language and seeing a thing. For instance, understanding language is an automatic state like seeing a thing. Beside, we understand a bit of language interpreted and with content, just like seeing a thing. Although, epistemic view has some advantages. For example, epistemic view can explain the cognitive and inferential role of general and linguistic knowledge in understanding a bit of language. In this paper, we try to show that our linguistic knowledge in perceptual view has a psychological role, and our general knowledge of world can account a part of our understanding dispositional in understanding a bit of language, so we do not need a cognitive and inferential explanation for linguistic understanding, necessarily. In short, the perceptual view has some advantages but the view encounter with some challenges: first, the process of understanding a bit of language is not clear, conceptually. Second, the perceptual view cannot explain how we do understand a sentence or phrase in second language. Finally, this approach cannot explain how we understand a new sentence and ambiguous phrase.

Schopenhauer believes two aspects in the realm of ethics. The first aspect is compassionate person that he discussions in this context of freedom and determinism, moral responsibility the right philosophy, moral virtues and vices moral psychology and the kinds of traits and says compassion is the source of all actions that have a genuine moral values. The second is saint realm that he discussions in this context of death, justice, metaphysics of sexual love, asceticism and mysticism. In this aspect, the saint in order to will deny resign of life knowingly and oblivious to anything completely. When we focus on these two dimensions, we see that are in conflict with each other. On the one hand he says that any ethical and on the other hand says to moralize the most desirable for the individual is interrupt of any determination. but it is clear that without compassion and sympathy with others will hold is impossible. and if we accept compassion as the foundation of ethics, dies will deny of the person saint. On the other hand will as a thing in itself and the substance only be asked and it is in that demand can not be. So can not deny itself.

In Islamic philosophy, intellectual perception has a higher situation than sensory perception, and then it is not sense-based cognition. Vision-based knowledge is a cognition in which the sense of sight prevails over other aspects of epistemology. The authors are seeking to study Mulla Sadra's vision-based perspective on mental existence after finding the criteria for research. Much of Mulla Sadra's use of visual terms in explaining his views on mental existence can be the first sign of his vision-based tendency. In this paper, after a separation of knowable forms into particular and universal, aspect of the visionbased tendency of each of these two kinds is examined and it has been shown that the subsistence of issuing of particular (sensual and imaginary) forms of an essay is basically the vision-based aspect; In this approach it means, the visual aspect of the external object is inseparable of its mental existence. Since Mulla Sadra's claim is in the universal forms (rational) view of the distant one, it was found that this idea is not empty of vision-based tendency; Though Mulla Sadra has been a success to defeating the sense-based tendency. According to the authors, the category of knowledge in the philosophical system of Mulla Sadra, at least based on what he said in mental existence theory, is influenced by the sensual appearance of objective knowable and more than other senses are affected by vision, and furthermore this outcome includes particularities in universals.

The purpose of the philosophy of international law of Environment, is the general views of the governing science of law in general and international environmental law in particular. Two subjects are involved in the philosophy of international law of Environment, which is basis and the other is goal of the law. The philosophy of international law of environment overlaps substantially with the philosophical work of environmental ethics. International environmental law by establishing mechanisms for continuous and permanent international cooperation among governments, many of which come from treaties The internationally-fueled, has shown how environmental degradation threatens international peace and security as an opportunity for international convergence. it is mentioned that, The discussion of the philosophy of international environmental law will result in dual outcomes, depending on whether the material or divine attitude. The purpose of this article is to educate environmentalists with different views of environmental philosophy in today's world.

Despite being rather a less known character in his time, Maurice Blanchot, French philosopher and literary man, became famous due to his writings in the second half of the 20th century, particularly among philosophers as well as literary critiques. What is most distinctive about Blanchot’s works is his fragmentary approach towards philosophy and literature which results not in the establishment of a literary theory or a philosophical system, but rather in an anti-theory or a non-systematic attitude to these realms. Among the various aspects of Blanchot’s thought, one can recognize the uncanny relation that he suggests between the origin of literature and the problem of finitude and death. Now, by discussing Blanchot’s ideas about the indefinability of literature, the origin of literature and also the question of death, the present article seeks to discuss the relation between the origin of literature and the problem of finitude. As we shall see, Blanchot’s viewpoint regarding finitude and nihilism could be considered as what constitutes the secret of literature’s opacity and its origin.