نشریه خردنامه صدرا
پیاپی 66 (زمستان 1390)

Based on a rational classification, philosophers have divided philosophy into two theoretical and practical types. Some believe that theoretical philosophy is superior to the other one, but some others doubt this idea on the grounds that theoretical philosophy is nothing but a reaction to external objects due to a soulish quality. Or, perhaps, it is the separation of Aristotle’s theoretical philosophy from the fundamental principles of practical philosophy which has affected the above idea and led to this incorrect conclusion. Nevertheless, in Islamic philosophy, like in the Illuminationist school of ancient Iran, philosophy is always brought to the fore after the training of Man’s innermost. In this approach, the existence of a moral guide and teacher is necessary in order to attain human perfections. Unfortunately, after Aristotle, the role of teachers was ignored in practical philosophy and ethics so that those trained in Peripatetic philosophy turned into its unripe fruit and this by itself paved the ground for the revival of Illuminationist philosophy. In the lifeless Peripatetic ethics, knowledge lacked a holy aspect and was nothing but a middle term.In Mulla Sadra’s philosophy, theoretical and practical philosophies have a bilateral relationship. Based on the principle of the return of all existents to their true essence and through resorting to the principle of the trans-substantial motion, he considers Man and society to be in a state of becoming directed towards perfection. While for Peripatetics virtue was a mundane phenomenon, in Sadrian philosophy happiness is both mundane and spiritual and is concomitant with an increase in the standard of being and ontological level. In this school, the faculties of appetite, anger, etc. ultimately turn into some luminous faculties that, in the course of a wayfarer’s journey, render ascetic practice into a pleasure which is the same as having self-control in order to gain freedom from the prison of appetite and passion. According to Mulla Sadra, in order to reach this level, in addition to free will, one requires the element of divine effusion, which is the same holy spirit of Illuminationist ethics.

The discussions of the philosophy of ethics, ethics, ethical attributes and, following it, the soul and spirit in Mulla Sadra’s works are quite extensive. In fact, he has dealt with such topics in his various books and treatises in detail. He believes that the criterion for ethics is the free intellect (conscience), and human beings will be rewarded or punished in proportion to their conduct and behavior in this world. Good moral behavior in this world will indeed be compensated with good other-worldly rewards, and unpleasant behavior therein will be followed by unbearable punishment in the other world. In other words, any kind of behavior and conduct dominating Man’s soul in this world will be revived in the same form on the resurrection day. Therefore, Mulla Sadra believes that self-knowledge as the receptacle of philosophy is always a way towards God and a means of attaining the knowledge of God and His attributes, which is the best of all types of knowledge in the world. That is why some of the arguments on God’s existence are based on the problem of the soul. Self-knowledge is essential to the discussion of resurrection and the belief in its independence. Since some of the problems of the soul are among the ethical axioms (in spite of some disagreements among the schools of the philosophy of ethics), almost all Islamic philosophers are unanimous that ethics is related to the perfection of the soul, and that ethical discussions are based on the principle of soul’s being prone to perfection and its being influenced by ethical acts. They also believe that without ethics, we will not be able to provide adequate rational and philosophical explanations for ethical good or bad. Nevertheless, in order to become aware of the quality of the perfection of the soul through ethical acts, one must know about the perfection of the soul, consider it as his purpose in life, and adopt certain ethical behaviors in order to achieve this purpose. Therefore, in Mulla Sadra’s view, ethics and practical wisdom is, in fact, a kind of self-knowledge.

One of the most important problems of human beings today is the feeling of meaninglessness and fear of absurdity. This paper aims to reveal that, first, Man enjoys a series of inner and epistemological perceptions and is capable of understanding philosophy through the faculty of imagination. Second, it intends to demonstrate that human ontological values are of a beyond-matter nature. Therefore, a human being who has a meaning-seeking and philosophy and knowledge-thirsty essence and follows some values beyond the level of the world of the senses, nature, and matter will never feel absurd and will never suffer from the lack of identity.In this paper, while explaining the components of existence and its quality from the philosophical viewpoints of theist philosophers such as Tillich and Mulla Sadra, the writer deals with the philosophical structures of these two philosophers and the similarities and differences between them. He also takes it into consideration that in the philosophical systems of these two thinkers, meaning accompanies existence, so secularism and meaninglessness appear when meaning is separated from existence. The writer also takes divine and ontological principles into account when analyzing meaningfulness in the philosophical structures of these two philosophers and, at the end, provides some suggestions for further research.

In Mulla Sadra’s school of philosophy, guardianship has mainly a Qur’anic and gnostic taste and flavor. In his view, guardianship, which is the inner being of prophethood, is of two general and particular types. General guardianship, according to the Qur’an, involves all believers. Particular guardianship means the annihilation of the loving wayfarer in the essence and attribute of Almighty Truth. This guardian, who is a perfect Man, gnostic, and God’s caliph on Earth, enjoys genetic guardianship, which is of different degrees and levels. According to traditions and based on philosophical arguments, absolute guardianship before creation, is an intermediary in creation, accompanies the created, is a guide and proof for them, and continues through divine subsistence after the created. Therefore, unlike prophethood, guardianship is not disconnected, and that is why its primary purpose is other than leading people. This is because the ultimate end of a supreme existent is not the benefit of an inferior existent but at some levels of guardianship people will benefit from the guardian. However, the outer being of a prophet is Shari‘ah, and his purpose is to guide God’s servants. This guardianship comes to the Infallible Imam (leader) after the end of prophethood, and at the time of the absence of the Imam (a), a religious jurist who is most similar to a prophet in terms of his knowledge of Shari‘ah will undertake this duty. Such a duty also includes political guardianship because it is responsible for organizing and regulating people’s affairs.

In Mulla Sadra’s view, cognizance of Man is a difficult task because Man does not have a known level of existence so that a fixed quiddity is abstracted from him. Given this problem, one might ask what Mulla Sadra’s explanation of Man is, and which approach one should follow in order to explain it so that it will be consistent with his initial claim.Sadrian philosophy agrees with defining Man as “a rational animal”; however, the explanation of Man in this school does not originally depend on presenting a “logical definition”. Rather, it depends on the same truth that has caused the difficulty inherent in knowing Man. Mulla Sadra’s explanation of Man is based on his very ontological change and evolution. That is why we can consider Man’s most important feature in the Transcendent Philosophy to be his ontological transcendence and traversing various levels. Accordingly, Sadrian ontology is based on the principiality of existence and, therefore, in order to narrate it, we must choose Man’s existential features as the beginning and central point around which the details of other issues are explained. The present paper intends to accomplish this task and, following a specific approach, considers “existential poverty” and the potential for “transcendence and perfection” as the most important pillars of Sadrian anthropology. Moreover, the writer explains elements such as activity, creativity, free will, training, and responsibility based on the above two concepts.

According to Kant, in order to gain experience, as a necessary and universal knowledge of entities and nature, we need several philosophical and, sometimes, logical concepts which, based on Hume’s analyses, are not rooted in experience. This problem prompted Kant to consider the origin of these concepts in the mind and explain their ontological nature as content-free forms and patterns which grant knowledge only if they acquire their content from pure and empirical intuitions. This approach has initially resulted in limiting Man’s knowledge to the realm of experience. Besides, in the acquisition of this knowledge, the activity of the mind leads to a kind of idealism and denying the realistic aspects of knowledge. The present paper, after clarifying the epistemological scope of philosophical concepts in Kant’s philosophy and analyzing the resulting philosophical consequences, intends to demonstrate the falsity of this standpoint based on the analyses of the Transcendent Philosophy from the whatness and quality of the acquisition of knowledge, in general, and philosophical concepts (secondary philosophical intelligible), in particular.

Suhrawardi’s epistemological encounter with Man enjoys some distinctive features. He transferred the discussion of Man from the field of physics to theology. He considers Man as a noble being whose most significant part of knowledge pertains to the truth. The function of the soul’s perception is of particular significance to Suhrawardi. In his view, proximity to the Dominion shows the perfection of the soul, and what hinders it is a mind deeply concerned with sense perceptions. He also considers the soul the most supreme of all faculties and the criterion for human perfection. He interprets the body as mass and suggests that mental and physical faculties affect Man’s perfection. In his view, the levels of human perfection start with the world of matter and end with the hidden world. When discussing primordial nature (fitrah), Suhrawardi deals with its relationship with logic and considers the intellect as the cornerstone of Man’s knowledge and sees intellectual perfection in attaining the knowledge of oneness. He also maintains that hidden meanings are imprinted on the soul and vanish very fast. The three terms of heart, intellect, and thought bear a direct relationship to his anthropology. For Suhrawardi, philosophy is intertwined with Man’s destiny, and his royal radiance is of the same meaning with gnostics’ ray of light.

One of the important discussions in predicative logic which is very close to the discussions in the logic of propositions is the problem of logical relations between propositions. This problem was often referred to under the title “contradiction and conversion” or “the principles of proposition” in early logical books, and today it is studied under the title “representative reasoning”. These relations were gradually indentified in the course of the history of logic and assumed particular names. However, the correctness of some of them has been questioned by a group of logicians.In this paper, by reference to the number of logical relations and two ways of classifying them, the writer investigates whether logicians have referred to all possible logical relations, and whether all the existing ones have been identified based on rational reasoning or through induction. Finally, he tries to demonstrate how many definite relations exist between propositions consisting of two definite terms (irrespective of their being positive or negative), and which of them is more fundamental.