فصلنامه معرفت فلسفی
سال هفدهم شماره 2 (پیاپی 66، زمستان 1398)

Normally, human beings think they interact with the natural things as they are. This is somewhat right, but some later thinkers believe, in explaining a deeper layer of human life, that the man does not live in mere nature, for things do not have their natural existence in the life of this peculiar being, and the man does not consider things as they are. Rather, in human life, things have special meanings resulted from human’s mental agency. These thinkers pose the idea of man’s living in fabricated worlds, and each has chosen a special way to explain it. The author, however, has conducted a detailed study regarding the nature of convention and conventional realities, offering a new theory called the “theory of conventional realities”. According to this theory, the man creates mental identities for anything with which he has interactions based on the affairs that can be called ‘conventional backgrounds’; and those identities would be the meaning and reality of the things. When considered together as a collection, the mental identities create a world that can be regarded the ‘conventional world’ or the manmade world. Accordingly, in the process of his life, the man creates two worlds called mind-world and construction-world wherein he lives.

The doctrine ‘soul perfection’ as one of the most important aspects of philosophical study of the soul suggests the existential perfectionism of the soul in the theoretical and practical spheres. The present article uses a descriptive-analytical method to explore this idea in Mulla Sadra’s thought and that of the New-Sadraids. From this inquiry, it is clarified that in the system of transcendental philosophy, the soul perfection is realized – in the theoretical sphere, in the light of the philosophical doctrine of ‘unity of the knower and the known’; and along with it, there exists the doctrine of ‘unity of actor and the action’. Among the most important anthropological foundations of soul perfection, one can refer to the ‘substantiality of the soul’, ‘corporeal originality and spiritual eternity of the soul’, and ‘substantial motion of the soul’. Among the most important achievements of the soul perfection in the sphere of anthropology, one can refer to the ‘critique of regarding the man as the infima species’ and ‘the soul’s lacking quiddity’. 

The main issue in this article is understanding the meaning of the verses 12 to 16 of the chapter Mu’menun in the Holy Quran, especially the phrase ‘and then We developed him into another creation’. It aims at finding out the relationship between the soul and the body as well as the realization of the imaginal body and an inquiry of the conformity of Mulla Sadra’s theory with the denotation of that glorified verse. This study uses a documentary-analytical method to prove that the phrase ‘and then We developed him into another creation’ refers to the stage of promotion of corporeal being and realization of the imaginal incorporeal being ready to be transferred to the purgatory. And the ‘blowing the spirit’ in the verse refers to the transcendence of the imaginal body which is, itself, of the orders of the soul and united with it. This fact can be well supported by considering the verses related to determining the gender. The aforementioned findings are in line with Mulla Sadra’s theory regarding the realization of the soul in the process of substantial perfection of body and abstraction of faculties perceiving the details as well as the unity of the imagination faculty with the imaginal body and, finally, the soul’s corporeal originality and spiritual eternity.

One of the basic issues in philosophy is the principality of existence or quiddity. It has been regarded as a breakthrough in the philosophy. The proponents of Mulla Sadra (Sadraids) believe in principality of existence and conventionality of quiddity. Mulla Sadra was the first philosopher who put this issue at the top of the discussions on ontology, making it the foundation for resolving other issues. To prove their claim, his proponents have adduced some reasons, the most important of which is based on the axis of ‘attribution’. That is, with a reliance on attribution, they have offered arguments that denote the principality of existence and conventionality of quiddity. In this regard, some of the effects they claim for the belief in principality of existence and conventionality of quiddity are related to ‘attribution’. In the present article, we study both the arguments presented and the effects related to the attribution. For the author, there are serious critics regarding both parts of the discussion.

The issue of innate ‘nature’ is, on the one hand, related to theology and is, on the other hand, the key for resolving many issues in anthropology. Human’s mode of existence is accompanied by a series of superb knowledge and attitudes called, in the Quranic culture, the ‘divine nature’ (the Quran, Rum, 30). In Imam Khomeini’s thought, innate natural things are divided into primary and secondary. The primary nature is the nature of love of absolute perfection and absolute goodness and happiness, and the secondary nature is the nature of hating defect and abhorring evil and wickedness. Natural affairs, for Imam Khomeini, are as follows: natural belief in existence of the origin, natural belief in monotheism, natural belief in collection of all perfections in that essence, natural belief in resurrection, natural belief in prophethood, natural belief in existence of angels and spiritual beings as well as revelation of divine books. In Allama Tabatabaei’s view, innate nature means creation from nothingness. What is inferred from Allam’s works is that he has put forward the role of religious nature in three spheres related to principle of monotheism: (1) seeking God, (2) knowing God, and (3) belief in God.

Existentialism, formed in the mid-twentieth century as an objection to all holistic inclinations, restricted its axis of attitude to human’s existence and maintained that the only device of construction of existence is freedom. For the existentialist philosophers, since the man’s genesis with special essence and nature has been denied, the man is then obliged to make his own identity with his own volition. Since there is no objective value from the existentialist philosophy’s viewpoint, and the values are formed just in the light of volition and choice, and it is not important to what end they would lead, the man comes to existence just when he does his works out of his volition and freedom. However, the question is whether any deed is valuable just because of being volitional, or the value of volition is related to things other than volition. Clearly, the answer lies in the axiological foundations of existentialism. They believe that any person must choose his own values individually. Thus, when there is no value beyond one’s ‘choice’, the very volition and choice are valuable; and since ‘choice’ is inevitable and evading it is not rational and it does not follow the causality principle, there is no objective and far-reaching standard for it. In Islamic view, however, volition – in spite of the fact that it creates superiority for the human over other creatures – has no value in itself and, put technically, it is not an independent favorite thing. Rather, the favorability and source of value of human’s volitional actions lie in human’s perfection.

Putting forward methodological discussions requires a vivid and common comprehension of the conception and reality of ‘method’. This is while scholars in various scientific fields have offered a variety of definitions for that conception, in a way that it seems difficult to find a common aspect among them. Thus, the precise analysis of that conception and recognition of its fundamental parameters is an inevitable necessity. Accordingly, it is first clarified that the conception of ‘method’ is a philosophical one whose most important accessories are the agent, orientation, the existing and favorable situations, the model and the territory. In view of these points, a descriptive-analytical investigation of definitions of this conception and paying attention to their weak and strong points made it clear that those definitions are not complete. Thus, defining ‘method’ as ‘the quality of human’s transfer from unfavorable situation to favorable situation’ is a definition without the aforementioned defects and committed to the type of that conception and its accessories.

Although Kant, in the history of philosophy, is introduced as the main architecture of modernity and as a philosopher supporting rationalism, morality and principality of the man, many works have been published on his role in promoting extreme racism in the last decades. In the present article, we have investigated the racist aspects of Kant’s view as well as its foundations and results. Materialism and relativism are two main foundations of racism in the modern age. Nevertheless, Kant is, in his racism, more influenced by philosophers such as John Locke and Hume who have defended racism in a legal and empirical framework. Of course, since he defends racism in a more detailed manner and justifies it as a necessity, he has the greatest role in promoting racism in the modern age and, thus, has been introduced as the founder of racism. We will argue, in criticizing Kant’s view, that his perception of the conception of ‘race’ is incoherent and non-scientific. The evidences Kant presents to show the essential difference of human races are invalid and tendentious, and finally racism, as one of the main factors of spreading aggression in the modern world, is not reconcilable with morality.