نشریه فلسفه تحلیلی
پیاپی 27 (بهار و تابستان 1394)

One good way to grasp the concepts is to study their instances. This article examines the types of mathematical explanation and introduces several new types of it. The two famous types of mathematical explanation are internal and external explanations. The local–holistic distinction is also a distinction used in philosophy of mathematics as a strategy of explanation. But it seems that we can distinguish a greater variety of mathematical explanations and thereby gain a better understanding of it. For example, demonstrative and non-demonstrative explanations can be separated. These two explanations are given, respectively, in the process of proving and such processes as modeling and idealization. This division is based on the theoretical or cognitive role of explanations, we can say. Moreover, we must separate the symbolic from the non-symbolic, the avoidable from the unavoidable, explanations. Some explanations can be removed from a process of reasoning, without prejudice to that process. They are given for educational or pragmatic purposes. But others are not avoidable, because the main burden of explanation is on them. This article separates this ten explanations and introduces several new types with different examples.

French philosopher and aesthetician, Mikel Dufrenne, is not such well-known in the phenomenological tradition, thought he was more concerned with aesthetics and art than his contemporary phenomenologists. In his book, The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience, he presents a phenomenological attitude, through merging aesthetics with art, which differentiates him from his contemporaries. In this book,he presents a new phenomenological definition of the a priori and considers the concept of the “affective a priori” as a main principle in the aesthetic experience.  This article attempts to clarify the concept of a priori in Dufrenne’s doctrine, and particularly the role of the affective a priori in the aesthetic experience, as the keys to a better understanding of his idea.

To solve a philosophical problem, the philosopher needs to recognize the problem first. According to an old prevalent notion, feeling must be subordinate to reason. Traditionally, knowledge, and specifically morality, considered to be formal and rational, as a priori, or experiential and emotional, as relative. Hence a philosopher like Immanuel Kant, through the formal– material classification considers the formal reason as the only way to gain absolutely certain knowledge. Max Scheler opposes this formal rationalism. Formalism of Kant’s philosophical system is the major challenge to which Scheler faces up. Hence he tries to stand against Kant’s formal system by means of an informal system which is based on a kind of phenomenology that neither is mixed with relativism and empricism nor needs to accept the formal rationalism. This article is going to clarify Scheler’s position on Kant’s formal rationalism.

After the arrival of philosophy in the Islamic world, Muslim thinkers adopted different positions on the relation between philosophy and religion. Some of them abandoned philosophy and despised it, some preferred philosophy to religion, yet Al-Farabi established a new philosophical system which gathered philosophy and religion together and denied their opposition. He analyzed the concepts of philosophy and millah to clarify the relation between philosophy and religion .In his view, millah and philosophy are not different; rather, they are synonymous. But he considered rightful only the religion that its founder and his followers pursue otherworldly happiness. For Farabi, philosophy is prior to religion and the true religion is based on the demonstrative philosophy. Having inquired the concepts of millah and philosophy, he concludes that the religious truth and the philosophical truth, despite their formal difference, are objectively one and the same truth. This view made possible for philosophy and Islamic principles to be compatible and in harmony. Beyond doubt, Farabi was the first thinker who established a new philosophical system on the basis of this harmony and his successors pursued his project and completed it.

Explaining the perfection of authority and how human beings may act is an ontological and anthropological approach of the transcendent theosophy. For this school, the human being is not independent from the supernatural agents, in terms of either the essence and essential perfections or the process in which his/her act is formed. Any act which is carried out by a human being inevitably enters into a necessary cause-and-effect course which ends up in the final cause. People’s external acts are caused by their wills; while in turn their wills are caused by causes and agents that are considered as incentives, which are out of the human’s essence. Meanwhile, philosophers believe that the human being is free to do what he/she intends, because the definition of power is true of him/her. Naini and his followers have challenged such explanations of the transcendent theosophy and have tried to demonstrate that just assuming the definition of power to be true of human being cannot explain his/her actual free choice. This study aims at reviewing and finally judging the challenges that both of the mentioned groups may encounter.

Karl Jaspers like other existentialist philosophers contends that existence depends on “being in the world” and “being with others”. In general, the concept of “otherness” is one of the fundamental concepts which is proposed more profoundly in his philosophy than in other existentialist philosophies, because for him otherness is something through which the individual understands himself. Communication with others is not necessarily conveying emotions and ideas; rather, it is related to “existence” or inter-subjectivity and also bound up with a type of mutual respect. One may say that for Jaspers, man’s “existence” lacks theoretical aspect and appears just in practice and choice; thus communication with others is among the situations that would make the emergence of human existence possible. In this essay, we try to highlight the importance of “otherness” and its relation to Jaspers’ other significant philosophical concepts. Above all, we attempt to elucidate the importance and the status of “otherness” in his philosophy.