فصلنامه فلسفه دین
سال هفدهم شماره 4 (پیاپی 49، زمستان 1399)

One of the outstanding doubts in the contemporary theology is the depiction of God as a projected image. According to this doubt, God is the same as the unfulfilled human desires and wants that go through a projection process, and then are turned into God. This descriptive-analytical study aims to explain this doubt based on the works of Feuerbach and the commentators of his works, and then criticize it relying mostly on the opinions of Muslim philosophers and theologians. It is suggested in this article that issues such as the difference in the way projection is conceptualized by Feuerbach and psychologists, the non-confirmation of this theory, its extreme humanistic basis, the anthropological atheism, and the ineffectiveness of some functionalist justifications are among the problems with this viewpoint.

The main question of this study was to identify the ethical motivation factors from the viewpoint of Ibn Arabi and to depict the path through which the ethical agent would achieve the optimal life intended by religion and ethics. A reference to Ibn Arabi’s works using a descriptive-analytical method made it possible for us to explain the ethical motivation steps as follows. In order to expand the existence, the general Divine grace bestowed the virtue of life onto the human, while the specific grace of sublime God installed the human as the (potential) collection of Names. The knowledge that is gifted by God and leads to knowing the world of archetypes informs the human about the reality of his existence. The divine grace and the human’s knowledge of this grace bring about kindness, set the ground for him to make effort, and make the context for the growth of optimal human character. Finally, the station of guardianship and knowledge about the divine guardians is another aspect of the divine grace, a way to recompense for the human knowledge incompleteness, and a compensation for his defective ambition; the last factor accelerates the transition from ethical motivation to ethical act.

One of the challenges facing the belief in the universality of the divine decree is the doubt on the conflict between the necessity of the contentment with the divine decree and the necessity of discontentment with the ethical evils. Avicenna has given in a two-part response to this doubt. In the first part, he examines the ethical evils’ mode of relationship with actor and acceptor, with only the latter relationship as leading to evilness. In the second part, he distinguishes the essential and accidental matters, and deems accidental evils as subject to the divine decree. This response solves the doubt only if the evils do not have any true existence and their existence is arbitrary. In this case, the contentment with something that does not have a true existence is not necessary and the doubt is answered. There are evidences in Avicenna’s words based on which we can figure out that he believed in the arbitrariness of the evils. This study shows that these evidences imply that Avicenna believed in this meaning of evilness. Of course, if one does not accept this implication, then Avicenna’s response to this doubt cannot be considered as an appropriate answer.

Based on his psychoanalytic principles, Freud provided an analysis of the origin and function of religion that influenced a wide range of twentieth-century thinkers. These influences often played a negative role, so most religious people either rejected Freud's analysis or viewed it with skepticism. Plantinga is one of the thinkers who adopt a relatively special view to Freud's analysis. In this article, we first briefly describe Freud's analysis of the origin and function of religion. We then present Plantinga's view on Freud's analysis, and finally show what role Plantinga's attention to Freud plays in the formation of Plantinga's religious epistemology. That is, one of Plantinga's main motives in discussing the theory of the fundamentality of belief in God, sensus divinitatis, and the theory of warranted belief is to avoid facing the doubt raised by Freud. However, a study of Plantinga's religious epistemology shows that his solution is not adequate, and that Freud's doubt cannot be answered through the way Plantinga has adopted.

The philosophy of Middle Ages began with the stances of Saint Augustine. In his teaching “I am guilty, therefore I exist” he defines the truth and existence of the human for the first time based on a human, non-divine action. The examination of the evolution from Saint Augustine’s foregoing statement to that of Descartes (I think, therefore I am) on the one hand shows the long-lasting challenge in solving the relationship between perception and truth, and on the other hand, determines the roots of modernism in some opinions suggested in Middle Ages. This article explains some of the most fundamental opinions of the Middle Ages thinkers such as Abelard’s Skeptism theory as the instrument to attain the truth, Saint Francis’ point that the truth is more a lowly thing within the human rather than a sublime matter, Voluntaryism and individualism of William of Ockham and Nicholas of Autrecourt, etc. This way, it clarifies the way the human intellect is represented in the modern age and the procedure that led to the production of the proposition “I think, therefore I am.” The study was descriptive-analytical in nature and used indicative reasoning for data analysis purposes. The findings revealed that the basis of Descartes’ philosophy (as the father of modern philosophy) is adopted from Saint Augustine’s thoughts. In other words, not only the beginning of the Middle Ages but also the establishment of the modern age should be attributed to Saint Augustine.

This study set out to answer the fundamental question on the relationship between the divine life attribute and other divine attributes from the viewpoint of Fakhr Razi. First, Fakhr’s concern with knowing the attributes was examined. His concern has been to achieve the complete knowledge or at least knowledge that enables the human to fulfill his intellectual liability for knowing the Creator. Then, the relationship of knowledge and power with life was investigated. The results showed that knowledge and power are two means of life, and life functions as their cause. In the next step, the relationship between volition and life was explored. It was revealed that Fakhr deems volition as subsequent to knowledge. Then the hearing and seeing attributes were scrutinized. It was discovered that Fakhr takes these two attributes as concomitant to knowledge or as means of it. In addition, the speaking attribute was examined, and it was found that speech reveals either knowledge or power, and this way connects to the essence. Finally, the eternity of the sublime God was found to be concomitant with His life. The overall finding of the study is that from the viewpoint of Fakhr Razi, the Divine Life is the central attribute connecting other attributes; without the life attribute, other attributes could not exist.

The question of the divine foreknowledge and the human freewill (volition) is among the most important and complex philosophical issues within the Abrahamic religions tradition, which has come to be called theological fatalism. In the article at hand, we present the new reading of this issue by Zagzebski and discuss the three traditional solutions by Boethius, William of Ockham, and Molina. According to Boethian solution, God is atemporal. William of Ockham deems God’s knowledge of our freewill as a soft fact rather than a hard one, while Molina denies the premise of the transfer of past necessity. This article shows that the question and its solutions have wrongly deemed the eternity of God within time. That viewpoint is against Anselm’s theology that takes God as atemporal. Finally, we show that atemporality solution agrees with Anselm’s theology and God’s actual knowledge. The human’s agency is in line with God’s agency. That is to say, on the one hand, God’s knowledge is at the top of the causal chain that leads to the realization of an act and is considered as one of the conditions for the realization of the voluntary act. On the other hand, the human knowledge and power is part of the causal chain of that action. Therefore, the consideration of the finite human knowledge as relying on the infinite and atemporal knowledge of God does not contradict the human freewill.