مجله فلسفه و کلام اسلامی
سال پنجاه و پنجم شماره 1 (بهار و تابستان 1401)

Believing in the individual essence of things, as an ontological issue, has its roots in Greek philosophers’ views. Aristotelian essentialism proves essential attributes for objects, according to which, the essence of the objects depends on their attributes. If such features change, objects will perish. Implementing his reference theory, Kripke shows that proper names are rigid designators, i.e.; their referents are fixed in all possible worlds, or, in these referents, there is something that remains constant in all cases. This results in proving the individual essence of things.Comparing Kripke’s and Allameh’s views, as well as using an analytical-comparative method, we try to clarify the essentialism in the frameworks provided by Analytical Philosophy and Islamic Philosophy regarding Kripke’s and Allameh Tabatabaie’s views.According to Allameh, Individual essence comes into existence through essentialism in Islamic tradition. Allameh and Kripke’s views are similar in the Individual essence of objects; however, because of belonging to two different tradition of philosophy, they disagree in other fundamental aspects.

In the Mulla Ṣadra’s works, there are two different accounts of the “principle of presupposition”. It seems that this two different accounts are inconsistent. There are strong intertextual relationships between Mulla Ṣadra  and Jalal al-Din Davani and  Sadr al-Din Dashtaki’s works. The two different accounts of Mulla Ṣadra can be traced back to a dispute between Davani and Dashtaki about this principle. Considering intertextual relationships in Mulla Sadra's works, I will present a new reading of Mull Ṣadra's real position on the meaning of the principle.

Having tried to discover the soul’s nature, thinkers have offered different views on the perfection of the soul. Emphasizing the ethical virtues and referring to the philosophical and theological arguments about happiness, al-Farabi depicts a comprehensive picture of the evolution of the happy man’s soul. He considers the man’s goal in achieving happiness through the acquisition of virtues in the natural world. Nonetheless, ultimate happiness is achieved just by releasing earthy attributes. Although al-Farabi uses the intellect as a vehicle for the soul to obtain happiness; finally, he does not consider happiness as a purely rational thing; rather, he believes that using the power of thought as well as rational contemplation are both necessary to acquire appropriate moral thoughts and actions, by which the soul’s first and later life are linked to its true consciousness.

The purpose of this article is to identify and analyze Thaddeus Metz’s views on happiness and its relation to meaning of life. In the past, the issue of happiness was a comprehensive one including the meaning of life. Thaddeus Metz has tried to indicate that meaning of life, like ethics and happiness, is one of moral categories of life and can not be reducted to ethics or happiness. Therefore, happiness, from Metz's point of view, means positive and pleasant experiences. Metz belives that human has two selves: animal and rational one; so, in addition to happiness and pleasure, he also needs meaning. Metz's effort is to explain that these two categories are different. By reflecting on Metz's various works, we try to critically study Metz's view on some of the characteristics and features of happiness and the relation of these characteristics and features to meaning of life.

One of the main philosophical issues is the belief in the necessity of the existence of mediators in the divine creation. A lot of researches have been carried out on the issue, but most of them are focusing on the narrative aspects, and its rational aspects have been poorly studied. In this article, for the first time, the issue is explored according to Mulla Sadra’s and Ibn Taymyyeh’s views, and examined in terms of Mulla Sadra’s philosophical principles, namely the quality of God's knowledge of the world and Sudur (Emanation). Finally, the critiques of the issue are answered, and it is shown that al-hikmat al-muta’aliyah can respond to the raised problems according to some of its basic concepts such as copula existence, extended being, basiṭ al-haqiqa (simple reality), and tajalli (manifestation).

Maimonides was strongly influenced by Muslim sages in his philosophical-theological thought. The present essay aims at proving the claim that Maimonides’s book "Guide of the Perplexed" belongs to the "philosophical theology" movement. In his book, Maimonides intertwines Jewish religious teachings with philosophical rules and tries to explain theological claims in a rational-philosophical method. Inspired by the thought and method of Muslim scholars, Maimonides's philosophical endeavor to organize Jewish theology was effective and brought about a dramatic change in the structure and approach of theology. A critical study of components such as ontological issues and general principles of metaphysics in theological works, applying logical and philosophical rules to explain doctrinal issues, reasoning and application of the argumentative method, use of interpretation as a method, the validity of reason, and the dominance of rationality over narration in proving theological claims are among the most important findings of this research.

This article examines Avicenna's response to Kite Fine's paradoxes about matter and form. He formulates these paradoxes under the theory of Aristotelian Hylomorphism and analyzes Aristotelian assumptions from their point of view. Avicenna's response to paradoxes is essential because it identifies the possible advantages and disadvantages of Avicenna's theory. The first paradox concerns the possibility of distinguishing between two objects that have a common form and matter. Fine offers three doctrines to solve the paradox: material migration, common form, and simple composition. Rejection of any doctrine removes the paradox. He pursues solutions by rejecting simple composition. The solutions involve examining the relationship between time index and composition, but Avicenna responds to the first paradox by rejecting the common form. The second paradox concerns the matter variation in an object and maintaining that object's identity over time. According to Fine, the paradox will not be solved if we reject the material migration and the common form. Again, the solution is to abandon the doctrine of simple composition, but Avicenna cannot solve the paradox by rejecting the common form. We examined several different answers from Avicenna's perspective, but we have shown that Avicenna cannot solve the problem.

The current essay seeks to explain the role of the doctrines of “the primacy of existence” and “the primacy of quiddity” in the determination of whether or not the Necessary Being is capable of having quiddity. The main question is which doctrine, whether the primacy of existence or the primacy of quiddity, can aid us to provide a more dependable and rationally grounded interpretation of the identity of the existence and quiddity in Necessary Being and the impossibility of its having quiddity in addition to existence. Using a descriptive-analytic method, after an exploration of the distinction or indistinction between the potentiality and causality in the nature of the Necessary Being and also referring to the notions of the conditional or causal dimensions, we will show which doctrine is more efficient in proving the divine purity of the Lord in having quiddity. However, some scholars have superficially suggested that there is a fundamental difference between the viewpoints of Mulla Sadra and Allameh Tabatabaei regarding the absence of quiddity in God. This essay has sought to show that Allameh Tabatabaei's criticism addresses the structure of one of Mulla Sadra's arguments regarding the impossibility of having quiddity on the part of the Lord and, given Allameh's belief in the doctrine of "the primacy of reality", the content of Allameh's view can be seen as in line with Mulla Sadra's view.

The common view in the transcendent philosophy of Mulla Sadra is that God's knowledge of pre-creation and post-creation objects is presentational (al-Ilm al-Huzouri), although there are differences between pre-creation and post-creation knowledge. In this article, it is proved that, for various reasons, God's knowledge before creation and after creation is acquired (al-Ilm al-Husouli). The most important of these reasons are: A: Knowledge by presence requires a union between God and creatures, while such a union is impossible by reason. B: It does not make sense for God to have knowledge, but his knowledge is outside of his essence. C: Before creation, no personal or concrete existence is realized, so the knowledge of presence before creation is intellectually impossible. In this article, it will be explained the difference between my selected view of the knowledge of God and the view of Avicenna regarding the embodied forms connected to the divine essence. Then the criticisms that have been raised against the theory of God's acquired knowledge will be answered and it will become clear that A: God’s acquired knowledge does not be attained necessarily through the process of acquisition. B: God’s acquired knowledge does not require the immanence of accidents in God’s essence. C: God’s Knowledge by presence is not superior to His acquired knowledge. D: The God’s Acquired knowledge does not deny His detailed knowledge. E: Denying God’s knowledge by presence does not mean the absence of things for God.

Concerning the issue of God’s knowledge of variable particulars, Fayyaz Lahiji relies on Ibn Sina’s theory of God’s knowledge of particulars, which is based on knowledge of universals, considering the God’s knowledge of objects as imprinted forms and acquired knowledge through causes. So, he tries to refer the change of the world of objects to the relationship of material beings with each other, and he responds the issue of change by the God’s active knowledge, and graduation in existence, and inherent simplicity of the Supreme Being. Finally, he offers a distinct interpretation of imprinted forms which is close to Mulla Sadra’s theory of undetailed knowledge as detailed unveiling. He says absolute perfection of God demands that, with the undetailed knowledge, all the forms are known for the Supreme Being in a detailed and distinct manner from each other. This article tries to investigate and criticize Lahiji’s attempt to solve the issue of change in God’s knowledge of variable particulars with the help of some philosophical foundations by using a descriptive and library method.

Nowadays, the issue of personal identity is one of the most important and challenging issues in philosophy and humanities. Among the philosophers who have dealt with this issue, Avicenna is of high importance, because he has studied the existential structure of human beings both clinically and theoretically and intellectually with special attention to self and body. In this research, Avicenna's philosophical anthropological foundations, such as the non-eternity of the soul, the soul and body dualism and the interrelationship of the soul and body, are reread in order to infer some views about personal identity. The findings of this study indicate that the aforementioned anthropological foundations have a very good capacity to explain topics such as conceptualization of personal identity, topics related to self and its difference with personal identity, characteristics of personal identity, constructive components of personal identity, and the process of its formation.

The problem of human perception through some mental being and its immanent relation with the soul and the latter’s presential knowledge of the mental being and the correspondence between the mental being and the external reality is indeed the very answer given by Avicenna to the question of the mechanism of the acquisition of knowledge of the external sensory objects. This essay seeks to explain why this analysis changes in Transcendent Theosophy into the theory of intuition by the soul, in the first stage, and the birth of the mental being from the independent notion of the presential knowledge, in the second stage. Amid the era of Avicenna and the era of Mulla Sadra, some philosophers emerged who were devoted to answering the objections against Avicenna’s stance, according to the author’s view, against the mainstream interpretation. The stance of these philosophers was not indeed the rival of Avicenna’s stance though certain objections can be levelled against their stance either. To study the reason of the aforementioned why, the author provides a historical sketch of these ideas from Avicenna to Mulla Sadra in a critical way and assays the reasons of the change in the coordinates of the analysis of the knowledge of the external sensory objects in Mulla Sadra’s philosophy.