نشریه جاویدان خرد
سال هفدهم شماره 1 (پیاپی 37، بهار و تابستان 1399)

It is already more than a hundred years ago that the Natural Philosophy and Metaphysics parts of Avicenna’s famous philosophical encyclopaedia al-Shifāʾ (The Cure) were published by the printing house of the Dār al-Funūn (‘Polytechnic’) academy at Tehran. This printing, which is usually referred to as the ‘Tehran lithographic edition’, is a milestone in Avicenna studies based on Arabic sources. It increased the level of attention for The Cure at a national and international level. About half a century after publication of the above edition, the first three volumes of the Natural Philosophy (al-Ṭabīʿiyyāt) part of The Cure were translated into Persian by Muḥammad ʿAlī Furūghī (b. 1294/1877, d. 1321/1942). It was this translation which incited the famous Iranian scholar Mīrzā Mahdī Mudarris Ashtiyānī (b. 1306/1888-89, d. 1372/ 1952-53) to write a critical study of it, both textually and philosophically. Outside Iran, the Physics of the Natural Philosophy part of The Cure was published four times: in Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, and the United States. It is especially the Cairo printing (begun in the nineteen-fifties and the first of the editions just mentioned) which had a huge impact, especially among Arabists, who until then mostly had no knowledge of or interest in the Latin Avicenna tradition, which goes back some nine-hundred years. With the modern printings of the Arabic text and the studies and translations that are based on it, one could say that Avicenna truly ‘went global’ for a second time, after his huge imprint on Western

In this essay, I'll try to deal with the philosophical analysis of the status and role of 'rules' in the framework of social life, and show what the foundations of a rule-based social science are. Thus, first, I'll reconstruct Winch's classical discussion about 'meaningful actions', and show how Winch, through the analysis of 'the rule-governed social life', builds up a certain type of 'interpretive sociology'. Then, I'll turn to three basic criticisms of the appeal to rules as some source of sociological explanations, which seems Winch's philosophical apparatus can't handle them. In the last section, this claim will be put forward that these criticisms are mainly due to the lack of some 'agency theory' in Winch's 'Wittgensteinian structuralist theory', and so, one can, by devising an adequate theory of agency, resolve the problems involved. For this purpose, Davidoson's ideas will be presented as a worthwhile, well-grounded source to obtain a clear, distinct understanding of the relationship between the social rules and agents.

Aristotle deals with theory and practice in the sixth book of Nicomachean Ethics by defining the two concepts of phrónesis and sophía. These two concepts are both intellectual virtues and are closely related to the concept of reason (nous). Of course, placing phrónesis alongside other intellectual virtues, including sophía, techne and episteme and counting it as one of the aspects of aletheuein makes it for Heidegger possible to prevent this concept from entering in to the field of ethical discussions. He attributes three meanings to the concept of phrónesis: first, having circumspection; the second is being resolute (entschlossen) and finally to have conscience (Gewissen). According to Heidegger, what is revealed in the relationship between phrónesis and sophía is the connection of philosophy with the knowledge that guides us in our daily works. By interpreting the concept of phrónesis in Aristotle, Heidegger achieves the source of the everyday understanding of Being.

The present study deals with the comparative study of Islamic architecture in the views of Titus Burckhardt and Oleg Grabar. Since the spiritual wisdom of Islam is manifested in the form and meaning of its arts, it seems that some scholars have neglected its various aspects in explaining the Islamic architecture’s meaning. Traditionalists with a semantic approach consider Islamic architecture to be influenced by the essence of Islam and historians consider Islamic architecture to be a continuation of Byzantine and Sassanid Art. Assuming that,despite the methodological differences in Burckhardt and Grabar's approaches,they explain Islamic architecture according to the role of religious component. The question is what influence their views have on the definition of Islamic architecture? Findings show that Burckhardt believes the formation of architecture and its elements have been derived from the Islamic traditions while Grabar refers to Islam as a cultural component along with historical and social ones.

The possibility of knowing God is one of the most important theological questions in different religions. In responding to the question of whether God can be known or not, different statements and arguments have been brought up. In the meantime, Origen of Alexandria, one of the greatest and most popular ante-Nicene fathers and the owner of the first systematic theology in Christianity has cited arguments supporting the possibility of knowing God; which were elicited from among his works, investigated and analysed in this essay. Origen proves the possibility of knowing God by protesting two rational and three scriptural arguments. He presents participating in Christ, the sole Mediator (Logos) and incarnated wisdom, as the only way to know God. However, Origen's belief that knowing God through the incarnation of Christ is the only possible way for the public to know God is inconsistent with the rational arguments he has stated.

One of the concepts in Buddhist tradition and specifically Mahayana Buddhism is bodhicitta.Bodhicitta is explained in the two primary and secondary meanings and total bodhicitta.The primary bodhicitta can be considered as the concept of yagza in Islamic theosophy and that is the beginning of the path that a bodhisattva passes in order to save themselves and other beings from suffering and get them to salvation.In Buddhist theosophy, bodhicitta is not considered as a step of bodhisattva in mystical conduct, and they consider it as a requisite for the seeker to reach the path.The primary bodhisattva is an intuitive-mystical concept which happens in a moment in an instant illuminative manner in the person and the person becomes comprehensible. In its main meaning, bodhicitta is an absolute matter which everyone has in their nature, and it remains intact forever.This concept of bodhicitta, is equivalent to shonita, dharmakaya and tathata.

One of the ways in which Avicennian logic is different from the other logical systems, is in the definition of propositions. In Avicennian logic, a proposition is a speech which we can truly say the speaker is true or false in what she has said. But in other logical systems, truth and falsehood are properties of propositions themselves. In the present article, we attempt to present a new explanation of this feature of Avicennian logic to determine its superiority over other logical systems. According to this explanation, Avicenna’s reasons for the definition are (i) he sought to provide a criterion for identifying propositions to avoid the problem of circularity in defining the propositions; and (ii)Since Avicenna considers not the potential proposition but the actual proposition as the primary bearer of truth, he attributes truth and falsehood to the speaker of the actual proposition, i.e., the person who utters the sentence.

The discussion of absolute truth, which is in fact the discussion of the transcendent essence, has been one of the most important topics in mystical religions and schools throughout history. The essence of truth is the unseen of the unseen and without any manifestation, even the manifestation of the unseen, and it is a truth free from name and symbol. The issue of absolute truth is rooted in the thought of Nagarjooneh and Ibn Arabi in religious and sacred texts. In the sacred texts of both thinkers, right as essence is a truth beyond the world, apparent and distinct from creation, and in its transcendence and sanctity has nothing to do with existence. For this reason, it is impossible to know and recognize and establish any kind of relationship with him. Right has an indescribable nature in terms of essence, and the most important way to describe it is silence.

John McDowell and Richard Rorty draw on Kant’s influential account of experience. For Rorty, Kant is the antagonist who succumbs to foundationalism or what Sellars calls the Myth of the Given and Wittgenstein is the hero who helps in overcoming the siren call of the Myth. McDowell, however, is ambivalent toward Kant. With Sellars, he applauds Kant as the hero who helped us vanquish the Myth of the Given. But he argues that Kant failed to recognize the full strength of his account of experience and capitulated to a subjective idealism. Wittgenstein, for McDowell, is the hero who helps us achieve an account of experience that gets to the things themselves. I adjudicate the philosophical and the exegetical tensions between Rorty and McDowell and support the latter’s approach to experience and to the reading of Kant and Wittgenstein.