فصلنامه فلسفه دین
سال ششم شماره 1 (پیاپی 5، بهار 1388)

Muslim philosophers have since their long history encountered lots of severe surges of doubts and oppositions, so they did their best to remove them all through deep investigation which brought about the progress of Islamic philosophy both in quantity and quality. Muslim philosophers were sometimes challenged by such questions as, determinism, the temporal creation of the world, the otherness of divine attributes than His Holy Essence, the denial of the final cause, the denial of necessity and proposing the idea of priority instead, that God can be seen, the denial of intellectual (essential) good and evil and proposing the divine command theory which would affect the divine justice, and so on. Such issues along with new isms would go like hot cakes for a while challenging Muslim philosophers who on their own behalf fought against atheistic modernism. Now and in a new guise it is post-modernism’s turn to chant the slogan of relativism and pluralism denying the impartiality of the intellect. Having believed in nothing (nihilism) rejecting the belief in progress, post-modernism embraces different and contrary ethnic cultures as true. Within such situation, once more new horizons are opened for the Muslim philosophers expected to do deeper wider researches.

From Marcel's point of view, since philosophical issues such as existence and free will belong to the realm of mystery rather than problem, metaphysics is a matter of meditation on mysteries which are considered through secondary reflection. Gabriel Marcels believes that the metaphysicians have made the mistake of trying to put forward philosophical issues which are of the sort of mystery as problems and to solve them through reasoning. He holds that as long as mysteries arent solveable, they have gone the wrong way and so failed. From Marcel's point of view, since philosophical issues such as existence and free will belong to the realm of mystery rather than problem, metaphysics is a matter of meditation on mysteries which are considered through secondary reflection. Gabriel Marcels believes that the metaphysicians have made the mistake of trying to put forward philosophical issues which are of the sort of mystery as problems and to solve them through reasoning. He holds that as long as mysteries arent solveable, they have gone the wrong way and so failed.

Alister McGrath criticizes atheistically evolutionary view of Richard Dawkins in natural sciences; and believes that the evidence that is put forward by Dawkins for explanation of his hypothesis, is not compatible with the result of his argument. Dawkins attacks against Christianity in four arguments, and believes that science has removed God and religion is against every kind of demonstration and acts as a virus for the mind. McGrath replies his criticisms and asserts that atheistic view of Dawkins has an untrue scientific mark and suffers from weakness in a demonstrational scientific that there is no relation between natural sciences and atheism. Natural sciences have neither atheistic nor theistic approaches, but it may be described in atheistic or theistic terms. In this paper, both views will be analyzed. Although McGrath's responses are valid, the scale of penetration of his criticisms in to Dawkin's claims will be examined.

According to leading authorities in the training system of Islam, the reason for man's creation is the achievement of absolute perfection. Given that on the one hand the Wise creator must not have any impossibility in his purpose and the purpose from the Wise must be possible and attainable and on the other hand man is a thinking creature and he never sets the impossible as his goal, the achievement of absolute perfection as the reason for creation must be wrong and this view should be revised. According to leading authorities in the training system of Islam, the reason for man's creation is the achievement of absolute perfection. Given that on the one hand the Wise creator must not have any impossibility in his purpose and the purpose from the Wise must be possible and attainable and on the other hand man is a thinking creature and he never sets the impossible as his goal, the achievement of absolute perfection as the reason for creation must be wrong and this view should be revised.

Traditional foundationalism, initially put forward by Aristotle, also received attention in the Middle Ages. Thomas Aquinas sustained the theory with a little bit adaptation. But, becuase of his unique conception of the mechanism of knowledge acquisition, William of Ockham suggested a theory of foundationalism based on direct realism. In order to avoid the criticisms levelled at Aristotle's foundationalism, he also rejected the theory of form and put emphasis on the certainty of emperience. In this article, first we will review the foundationalism of Aristotle and Aquinas very brietly and then we will examine that of William of Ockham in detail. Finally, we will show that Ockham's theory is more compatible with the theory of acquaintance than that of Aristotle and Aquinas. Nowadays, many leading proponents of traditional foundationalism believe that in order to maintain this theory they should take hold of the theory of acauaintance.

Transcendental is such a significant term in Kant's thoughts that he calls his philosophy Transcendental Idealism. However, this term isnt used with the same meaning in his philosophy. Since the term is associated with the same meaning in the works about kant, it seems necessary to clarify its meaning in order to prevent any misunderstanding. The subject of this paper is to clarify the meaning of Transcendental Freedom. The conclusion arrived at in this paper is that Transcendental in Transcendental Freedom and other contents has the same meaning as Transcendent, that is, Kant has used Transcendental in the meaning of Transcendent.

The present work is an attempt to explain the manifestation of Spirit in history and development of consciousness and achievement of freedom in Hegel's philosophical one, as the most comprehensive philosophical system. Therefore, the narration of this development and the presentation of this kind have no choice except to regard Hegel's "Encyclopedia of philosophical science" as the stand points of this manifestation and degrees of that development, if it has decided to attain the Truth and represent the preciseness of Hegel's system. In this Article, at the beginning, we will take "Spirit" or "consciousness" into consideration as a subjective affair that is concerned to analgzing of categories of thought in the form of Logic and following the absolute. But because of limitations of subjective world and tendency of consciousness to the objective world, it changes its way into objective affair in "Nature", and in "philosophy of Spirit" it finally attain his satisfaction of soul and identity of subject and object that is climax of consciousness and freedom.