فصلنامه فلسفه دین
سال شانزدهم شماره 2 (پیاپی 43، تابستان 1398)

One of the divisions of reason is the distinction between theoretical and practical reason. Despite the different interpretations of these terms, the intellectual percepts are sometimes related to beings and at other times to the dos and don’ts and the goods and evils. What process does the reason go through to attain these dos and don’ts? Some theories have been suggested to answer this question. These can be categorized into three groups: the popularity of the practical judgments, their arbitrariness, and their realism. In the article at hand, all three viewpoints are explained and then, the stance that suggests the practical reason judgments should be in relation to something else –i.e. a realist theory – is accepted. In this theory, the intellectual dos and don’ts predict the existence of the necessity between action and its result. The specific exposition of this theory in the article at hand answers three doubts about this theory: the violation of the theory by the first dos, the belongingness of the dos to the currently existing action, and the establishment of the theory based on personal whim rather than intellectual purposes.

The Islamic Republic of Iran was established based on a religious theory and its constitution was also developed based on religious concepts such as the Unity of God, Justice, Imamat, and Resurrection. On the other hand, the constitution sets the ground for the organization of the essential institutions and primary values, and guarantees the citizens’ freedoms. Although at first glance the constitution is considered a legal document with legally normative functions, we can now see the appearance of ethical points – mostly religion-based – in this supreme document. These ethical points can be considered as conditions for the rulers, a clarification of their required qualifications, and standards for the evaluation of their governance. Adopting an ethical approach, the article at hand aimed at investigating the basic existential philosophy of the constitution as well as the principles mentioned in it, and tried to show that ethical teachings exist explicitly and implicitly in the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran and continue to support it. It is even possible to give in an ethical interpretation of institutions such as the constitution and the separation of powers.

Since different Islamic schools have different views to the scope of the human reason in knowing religion, the article at hand aimed at answering the question that “If Asharites have kept their literalist views, or have accepted reason as a tool for knowing the religion”. To this end, the article explored their intellectual and theoretical principles from the viewpoint of reason and finally proved that despite the Asharites’ traditionalist view to reason – based on which they prioritize narration over reason and turn their attention to the literal aspects of the Qur’ān and the traditions – it might not be said that they do not use the capacities of reason to understand religion, or that they are the avid opponents of reason. According to the view taken by this article, how could Ashari – who founded his theological thoughts based on the intellectual reason – eliminates reason totally from his thoughts and opposes it?! As an evidence to the contrary, we might say that he has relied on reason to provide explanations in various religious and theological issues such as the eternity of the Qur’ān, intercession, and the appointment of Imam. These are evident in the works of Ashari and his followers such as Ghazzali and Fakhr Razi, and can be used to support the conclusions of this article.

The comparative study of the approaches of Fakhr Razi and Stace toward religious language reveals that concerning the methodology, they both emphasize the mystic and religious intuition method. With regard to their justification for religious beliefs, they both adopt a foundationalist view to the religious propositions. However, Stace has taken the whole religion to be equal to mysticism, beyond reason and logic, and paradoxical, while Fakhr Razi has deemed only a part of religion to be inexplicable and has considered the language related to it to be true. In the same vein, their stances toward religious faith and their understanding of revelation are also different. With regard to the criticism of their views it might be said that in Stace’s viewpoint, in addition to the internal inconsistency, the material and immaterial worlds have been considered as separate and horizontal. His approach involves conditions such as fideism, non-cognitivness of the religious language, human’s needlessness to revelation, etc. However, Fakhr Razi has adopted a fideistic-intellectual method to deal with the religious language. Analyzing the divine attributes and names through affirmative and negative approaches, he has considered human to be in need of revelation. Therefore, Fakhr Razi’s viewpoint to religious language is more complete than that of Stace.

Philips is a scholar with a non-cognitivist view toward religious beliefs. Suggesting the fallacy of the sublimity of religious language, he believes that this language is non-referential and non-descriptive, and separates the true being from the rational being in its statements. This article shows that in his thought system, for the religious language to be descriptive it should never try to prove the existence of God and other religious parameters independently from the religious context, because it is the religious lifestyle that gives suchlike beliefs their meaning and existence. From Philip’s viewpoint, discussions about God and other religious topics entail allusions to their referents, although these referents are not external phenomena, but rather, are realized in Faithful’s lifestyle. He accepts the descriptive and referential nature of the religious language within the boundaries of the religious lifestyle, and this, of course, is what distinguishes him from other analytical philosophers of religion. As a result, some discourse analysis philosophers in the domain of the philosophy of religion have put forth the following criticisms against his viewpoint: the inaccuracy of making a distinction between the logical existence and the true existence of God; the rejection of the reality of religious elements based on Philip’s positivistic principles; and the failure to prove the inability of the ordinary language to talk about the metaphysical issues.

Studying the human as the focal topic of humanities and addressing the humanistic principles as the most essential prerequisite of the evolution and production of Islamic humanities is of utmost importance. Each of the common, humanism-based paradigms in the Western humanities has a specific description of the human’s nature. The affirmative school with its objectifying and mechanical view of the human, the interpretive school with its semantic approach and concentration on the understanding of the human’s volitional acts, and the critical school with its belief in the freedom of the human and the domination of historical and social determinism are used to define the environment of the human. Contrarily, in the Islamic approach, the human is considered as a creature with divine nature that is two-dimensional and has volition and natural dignity and a high status, a status that is meaningful only in line with theocentrism. The overall outcome of comparing the humanistic principles that exist in the common humanities paradigms is the empirical and materialistic view of the West to the human, which shows its natural and essential difference with Islamic principles concerning the human.

Today, scholars take a significantly different approach to the question of reincarnation. Probably up to 100 years ago, most issues including reincarnation were examined and discussed based on a completely rational and discursive approach. However, Today’s scholars adopt an experimental and posteriori approach to this issue.  One of these issues regards “near death experiences”, which is briefly called NDE. Some claim that when they were near the clinical death, they have seen many events. Seeing the successive previous lives is one of the observations that has been recounted by these NDE participants and has been taken as a proof for the verification of reincarnation. The main question of the study at hand, then, is that if these reported experiences could prove reincarnation? The examination of the reports of these participants based on the library research method and the analyses provided by psychologists for this hypothesis proves that even if we accept the very occurrence of the NDE, many of its details such as the verification of the successive lives based on NDE is no possible and these experiences are unable to prove the reincarnation.

One of the good names of God in the Qur’ān is Al-Kafi (the sufficient [supporter]). The sufficient support and protection of the human by the qur’ānic God has various manifestations and aspects. The qur’ānic God introduces God as the supporter of the human in the face of natural and social threats as well as his supporter in the life after death. The article at hand focused on the role of theism in compensating for the shortcomings and inadequacies of the human and explored the dimensions of the qur’ānic God’s sufficient support for the faithful. This way, it was found that the answers of the Qur’ān to the needs of human nature and its promise to compensate for his shortcomings have been effective in its audience’s acceptance of its teachings, and the mystery to the immense power of the Qur’ān is the huge force of these needs in the humans.