نشریه خردنامه صدرا
پیاپی 50 (زمستان 1386)

The view of man held by Muslim thinkers and scholars is basically different from what has become common since the 14th century in the Western world under the influence of Humanism. What has made the issue difficult for Europeans today is the annihilation of a correct view of the world and human beings. If man does not succeed in knowing the truth, its meaning, and the ways to attain it, he cannot live with being meaningless and having no faith or ideal. Ethics and faith are impossible without a kind of wisdom and metaphysics. The events of the 20th century and the unprecedented tragedies that happened during it prove that when religious principles become shaky, ethics cannot be defended. The Renaissance tried to turn Christians, who had one eye on the Heaven and one eye on the earth, into completely terrestrial human beings. In other words, until then, man did not view the earth as his main abode and always felt like a stranger there. However, this movement gradually led to the development of a kind of rational power in man. Accordingly, he had to choose one of the two: either a purely philosophical rationalism or a kind of religious and sentimental mysticism. And, when religion was weakened, what replaced it was a number of existential schools.Our purpose here is to explain Mulla Sadra’s teachings concerning man and demonstrate that his theory in this regard is different from those of Western philosophers. This paper also clarifies the various dimensions of man’s knowledge and his role in having the right encounter with the crisis of the ipseity of contemporary man.

Kant’s general purpose in the first half of his Critique of Pure Reason is to explain the empirical knowledge of the world within the framework of Newtonian physics. Here, the principles of understanding and, particularly, the principles of the relation group are of a higher level of importance. In this paper, through a study of Kant’s claims and arguments concerning the third principle of the relation group (the principle of partnership) and considering its relation with the mental succession of ideas in the faculty of imagination, as well as the second principle of this group (the principle of causality), the writers deal with the problem of the success of Kant’s plan for the philosophical clarification of the third law of Newtonian physics. They also intended to know if the above-mentioned plan is in conformity with other analogies or not.

Inquiring about the secret of the superiority of Mulla Sadra’s philosophy to other philosophical schools is a basic question in the field of Islamic philosophy which can be answered based on Sadrian methodology. We can refer to seven theories regarding this methodology. The writers believe that Mulla Sadra had a research model for using the multiple and various sources he had at his disposal. It was in the light of following this model that he succeeded in innovating new theories. In this way, they account for his numerous innovations.There is an eclectic view against the above theory which accuses Mulla Sadra of mixing various thoughts. This theory is incapable of accounting for his innovations.The present paper is an effort to explain one of the most complicated problems of Islamic philosophy based on available proof, while following Mulla Sadra’s research model in this regard.

The purpose of the authors in this paper is to deliberate upon the relationship between some philosophical sciences – which have each been developed on the basis of awareness, such as phenomenology, hermeneutics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and epistemology – and psychology in its general sense (philosophical and empirical).This relationship is clarified through reviewing the issues and problems related to the above branches of knowledge, referring to their meeting points and shared problems, and also explaining the cases in which these disciplines feed on and benefit from psychology.

In today’s academic circles, many are of the opinion that fuzzy logic has brought the age-old principle of contradiction to an end. In this light, objective reality can no longer be reduced to A and non-A, or to zero and one. But is this presumption correct? Does fuzzy logic really violate the principle of contradiction? Is it true that fuzzy logic – in contrast to the Transcendent Philosophy – is based on the assumption that two contradictories can be true and false at the same time? In this article, the writer intends to examine this question by focusing on the problem of the simultaneous truth or falsehood of two contradictory propositions.

Ibn Arabi believes that there is a perceptive power in human beings which is other than the intellect and whose domain of activity is the realm of “imagination”. Although empirically and rationally impossible, the gathering of opposites is possible in this realm. The world of imagination is the clearest indication of the Truth, since He is the First, the Last, and the Appearance, and the Hidden. Therefore, a gnostic is not known unless through the gathering of two opposites. Ibn Arabi maintains that imagination is an all-embracing station of affinity for the Truth and creation. He also believes that it is the very form based on which man has been created and considers this knowledge the most powerful one by which gnostics perceive the Oneness of the Truth in the Plurality of creation.According to him, imagination only keeps what enjoys a sensible form or is a composite of sensible parts which are combined by the form-giving faculty. In this way, it provides a form that does not exist in the senses but is sensible for the viewer. He refers to the world of imagination as the way of knowing God in his gnostic theory. In this paper, we try to portray this world in a systematic manner.