پژوهشنامه فلسفه دین (نامه حکمت)
سال نوزدهم شماره 2 (پیاپی 38، پاییز و زمستان 1400)

Religious spirituality faces various challenges in the new world. One of these challenges is the question of meaningfulness or emptiness of life. While in the traditional world, few thinkers see life as empty and absurd, today there are many such views toward life that are in contrast to the spiritual view of it. This paper addresses the challenge that this view creates for religious spirituality and a spiritual view of life. We first review different approaches to the meaning of life -naturalism, supernaturalism, non-naturalism, and absurdism. We then consider three different readings of absurdity. These readings are formulated based on lack of purpose, lack of value, and unattainable aspirations. Various solutions have been proposed to deal with absurdity, such as rebellion, abandoning the aspirations, reconstruction of values, and ironic confrontation with existence. The proposal of the article is presented in several points: First, the meaning of life should be considered as "life narrative"; and such an approach to the meaning of life is different from purely argumentative approaches to the meaning of life. Second, it is possible to judge between different narratives based on theoretical and practical rationality. Third, religious spirituality, by adding elements to our belief system, can make our narrative of life meaningful and free us from the challenge of absurdity.

Patrick Grim has presented an argument against the compatibility of Divine Omniscience. Citing Cantor's Theorem and using the accepted definition of omniscience -knowledge of all true propositions- Grim denies the existence of an Omniscient due to the impossibility of a set that includes all true propositions. Grim's argument raised many answers by Christian philosophers. For example, Plantinga has objected to this argument by showing its self-contradictoriness. Although there are fundamental differences between Islamic and Christian theology in explaining the nature of omniscience, considering the capacity of Sadra's transcendent wisdom, by citing issues such as the definition and nature of collection as well as the conditions of impossible sequence, addition to refuting Grim's argument that there are more facts than the set of all facts, the possibility of the knowledge of Omniscient to an infinite series of sets of facts can be proved.

This research pursues the explanation of the approach of Firas al-Sawah (born 1941), the Syrian sociologist and theologian toward religion. Adopting the phenomenological method, he has studied and understood religion from a mythological point of view. In this article, we will show that his theory has many deficiencies coming from his focusing on the historical and mythological point of view: secularizing the foundations of the religious beliefs and origins of religious traditions, relying on unregulated interpretation, reducing revelation to religious experience, paving the way for diverse readings of religion, giving a mythical explanation of sacred events and figures in the history of religions, presenting a vague interpretation of the monotheistic nature (Fitrah) of human beings. Having an analytical method and citing excerpts from his works, we will explain these disadvantages in his theory.

Abu al-ʿAlaʾ al-Maʿarri (973-1057), a prominent blind and pessimistic poet and thinker in the Arab world, uses various images about life, through which the meaning of life can be analyzed. These images include suffering, disease, prison, poisonous snake, carcass, dark and raging sea, cruel and incompetent judge, uninvited guest, and illusory mirage. Accordingly, life is an unpleasant imposition having no meaning in its three senses -purpose, value, and function. This research shows that his deep thought has never been disengaged from the ultimate concerns of human beings. According to him, some of the factors that made the life difficult are: the instability of time, the loss of youth, the onset of senility, the onset of death, boredom and fatigue from repeated daily routines, emptiness, loneliness, homelessness in a world that lacks any emotion for human pain, lack of freedom, inability to cope with the destiny of the times, and, above all, the imposition of a throughout suffering life. Lack of pleasure, love, and finally cosmic optimism are the characteristics of his view of life. His opinion can be considered cosmic or existential absurdity and not moral.

Swinburne needs to present a coherent picture of the immaterial person because it is the foundation for accepting truths in his philosophy, such as God, angels, and the soul. He believes that the existence of an immaterial person is possible and that accepting such a being is reasonable, based on the same thought experiment as Avicenna's "floating man". In contrast to his opponents, he believes that an immaterial person can have attributes like hope and desire. However, these attributes may remain hidden in the immaterial person or manifest through the body. According to him, those theories that deny the existence of an immaterial person based on the inability to distinguish them from one another are hasty and that using memory and brain as the criterion for personal identity is false. He claims that the memory and the brain can be regarded as epistemological criteria for personal identity, but they cannot be considered metaphysical due to many issues. Swinburne's view encounters many problems, including the conflict between its various principles, the inconceivability of a bodiless human, and the need for a brain for any thought experiment. This article analyzes the foundations of Swinburne's theory, summarizes his arguments on the coherence of the immaterial person, analyzes his critical view of opposing theories, and comes to the end with some critiques of his theory.

The common understanding of Copenhagen interpretation of the uncertainty principle and indeterminism in quantum physics is that it is a negation of causal relationships. Having the relationship between the existence of God and causality in mind, some advocates of ontological naturalism assert that by negating causality in modern physics, there remains no room for belief in God as the necessary cause of the world and His actions in it. To examine this claim, I will explain briefly the quantum theory, Copenhagen interpretation of uncertainty principle, and its epistemological position. Next, I will investigate its relationship with causality and divine actions. The article concludes that not only is there no conflict between Copenhagen interpretation and causality, but the former is based on the latter and has complete coherence with the belief in God and His actions in the world. Compared to classical physics, its consistency with direct and special divine actions in the world is more.

According to the prevalent account of modernity, its essence is autonomy and the rejection of all authorities, including religious authorities. This account also argues that testimony as a source of knowledge and justification differs fundamentally from authority. In other words, it argues that accepting testimony as a source of knowledge and justification does not imply accepting others' authority and does not contradict modern rationality and epistemic autonomy. This view has significant implications for religious epistemology. This article shows that the above concept of modernity is incorrect by using the statements of modern classical philosophers. Then it criticizes the distinction between testimony and authority. Any belief based on testimony is intrinsically dependent on the source's authority; thus, one cannot separate them. The article then presents two other significant criticisms of the idea of autonomy suggested by contemporary epistemologists. The conclusion is that the idea of autonomy is not justifiable and that accepting another authority under certain conditions is not in conflict with rationality, but rationality demands it.

According to the principle of alternative possibilities, an agent is only morally responsible if he could have acted differently as a decision-maker or as an actor. Frankfurt emphasizes, by contrast, that there are cases in which, although a person is not forced to make a decision or take action, it is impossible for him/her to avoid doing so, and yet the agent is morally responsible. The flicker of freedom and the dilemmatic argument are two of the philosophers' most important responses to the Frankfurt model in which he rejects the principle of alternative possibilities. According to the flicker of freedom strategy, the Frankfurt-Style examples do not eliminate all alternative possibilities, and there are still flickers of freedom. In other words, in a Frankfurt-Style example, even though the agent lacks the ordinary choices due to the presence of an intervener, he/she actually has a limited number of alternative choices, which seems to justify his moral responsibility. Fisher and Stump's robustness objection is the most important obstacle to advancing this strategy, which does not seem effective enough in defending the Frankfurt-style examples.

The contemporary analytic philosopher, Thomas Nagel, contends that the strong human disposition to harmonize with the universe raises a genuine question as to the relationship of human beings with the whole existence. This question, in his mind, ought to be answered, because answering this question is a path that might lead to an explanation of the meaningfulness of human lives and, subsequently, to the deliverance from the emptiness of life. In search for an answer to the question, Nagel explores the views of Hume, Kant, Sidgwick, Sartre, Nietzsche, Plato, and the shared teachings of religions, coming up with answers none of which he finds satisfactory. Accordingly, he decides that the question has no apposite response and, as a result, life is meaningless. Explicating Nagel's view as well as his critiques of the answers of the philosophers and religions, this article tries to show that: Firstly, one can, having Nagel's pressing question in mind, work out a theory of meaning of life based on the function of human life. Secondly, contrary to what he thinks, some of the philosophical and religious responses are acceptable. Thirdly, although one can explain the function of mankind's life drawing on the favorable philosophical and religious responses, these responses can be of no help in forming a judgement as to the function of each human individual's life; such a judgement is possible only when a full sight of the individual's life is accessible and this happens only after the termination of the individual's life. Finally, even if all philosophical and religious answers to Nagel's question are rejected, one can still defend the meaning of each human being's life. This is because the meaningfulness of each individual's life is not exclusively contingent on answering Nagel's question, rather, it is defensible based on the function of the person's life in relation to some collections that are smaller than the whole existence and possess some valuable objectives.

For the first time in 1993, Schellenberg introduced "divine hiddenness" as an argument against theism. Since then, his argument has been at the center of criticism and defense. In addition to explaining Schellenberg's argument and the most important critiques, this article introduces two new critiques by having an analytical-critical approach. The first is through contemplating the meaning of life. Regarding the benefits of a loving relationship with God, Schellenberg believes that such a relationship contributes to human well-being. He considers the personal relationship with God valuable in itself, which is essential to the meaning of human life. However, the main question is whether a personal relationship with God (that is, a conscious, interactive, and meaningful positive relationship with Him) is essential to the meaning of human life. Another criticism is the nonexistence of a possible world with complete divine love. In this critique, we state that for every world we consider, we can imagine a world with more divine love than it, and that world can also be actual. Therefore, if perfect divine love does not require the actualization of a possible world with complete divine love, it is also compatible with inculpable nonbelief.

Due to the influence of religious teachings, soul evolution after separation from the body has become one of the most important philosophical issues in recent decades. According to some scholars, Avicenna, among many philosophers, supported evolution in purgatory and the afterlife. According to these scholars, Avicenna's four philosophical works contain statements indicating the existence of movement and perfection in imperfect souls after they have separated from the body. However, according to them, one can apply his idea to all souls by paying attention to other statements in his works. The current study, which employs a descriptive-analytical approach, demonstrates that this interpretation of Avicenna's statements results from interpreting his texts with presuppositions. Avicenna has not proven the occurrence of immaterial soul evolution, nor has he proven its possibility. He merely wanted to prove the survival and resurrection of imperfect souls.

Moral semantics is one of the topics of moral philosophy that studies the definition of moral concepts, explains the truth, and determines the range of these concepts. Based on an analytical approach and an intellectual explanation, this study addresses the questions of the significance of moral virtues and vices and how we should understand them from the viewpoint of Allameh Tabatabai. Because of its unrealistic and relativistic nature, which leads to chaos, Allameh rejects the sociological approach to the semantics of moral virtues and vices. Instead, he explains the virtue-based and after-life-based approaches through perfection. In his view, the virtue-based and after-life approaches aim to attain worldly and after-life perfection. In moral semantics, however, the monotheistic approach emphasizes divine love as a means of approaching God. According to Allameh, virtues and vices are determined through comparison; therefore, they are philosophical concepts. Hence, the same method applied to philosophical concepts should be used here. In this respect, Allameh abstracts the meaning of these concepts by comparing voluntary behavior with the aim of the Islamic specific morality that is commensurate with human nature. It seems that Allameh has not specified the role of custom and intuition in the semantics of virtues and vices.